THE  NOVELS  AND  TALES  OF 
HENRY  JAMES 


New  York  Edition 
VOLUME  I 


RK 


RODERICK 
HUDSON 


BY 


HENRY  JAMES 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1907 


Copyright,  1875,  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co.,  and 

James  R.  Osgood  &  Co. 

Copyright,  1882,  by  Henry  James,  Jr. 

Copyright,  1903,  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

Copyright,  1907,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


Published  under  special  arrangement  with 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 


3RLF  £(.( 


URL 


PREFACE 

"  RODERICK  HUDSON  "  was  begun  in  Florence  in  the  spring 
of  1874,  designed  from  the  first  for  serial  publication  in 
"  The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  where  it  opened  in  January  1875 
and  persisted  through  the  year.  I  yield  to  the  pleasure  of 
placing  these  circumstances  on  record,  as  I  shall  place 
others,  and  as  I  have  yielded  to  the  need  of  renewing  ac 
quaintance  with  the  book  after  a  quarter  of  a  century.  This 
revival  of  an  all  but  extinct  relation  with  an  early  work  may 
often  produce  for  an  artist,  I  think,  more  kinds  of  interest 
and  emotion  than  he  shall  find  it  easy  to  express,  and  yet 
will  light  not  a  little,  to  his  eyes,  that  veiled  face  of  his 
Muse  which  he  is  condemned  for  ever  and  all  anxiously  to 
study.  The  art  of  representation  bristles  with  questions  the 
very  terms  of  which  are  difficult  to  apply  and  to  appreciate ; 
but  whatever  makes  it  arduous  makes  it,  for  our  refresh 
ment,  infinite,  causes  the  practice  of  it,  with  experience,  to 
spread  round  us  in  a  widening,  not  in  a  narrowing  circle. 
Therefore  it  is  that  experience  has  to  organise,  for  con 
venience  and  cheer,  some  system  of  observation  —  for  fear, 
in  the  admirable  immensity,  of  losing  its  way.  We  see  it  as 
pausing  from  time  to  time  to  consult  its  notes,  to  measure, 
for  guidance,  as  many  aspects  and  distances  as  possible,  as 
many  steps  taken  and  obstacles  mastered  and  fruits  gathered 
and  beauties  enjoyed.  Everything  counts,  nothing  is  super 
fluous  in  such  a  survey;  the  explorer's  note-book  strikes  me 
here  as  endlessly  receptive.  This  accordingly  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  contributive  value  —  or  put  it  simply  as,  to  one's 
own  sense,  the  beguiling  charm  —  of  the  accessory  facts  in 
a  given  artistic  case.  This  is  why,  as  one  looks  back,  the 
private  history  of  any  sincere  work,  however  modest  its  pre 
tensions,  looms  with  its  own  completeness  in  the  rich,  am 
biguous  aesthetic  air,  and  seems  at  once  to  borrow  a  dignity 

V 


PREFACE 

and  to  mark,  so  to  say,  a  station.  This  is  why,  reading 
over,  for  revision,  correction  and  republication,  the  volumes 
here  in  hand,  I  find  myself,  all  attentively,  in  presence  of 
some  such  recording  scroll  or  engraved  commemorative 
table  —  from  which  the  "  private  "  character,  moreover, 
quite  insists  on  dropping  out.  These  notes  represent,  over 
a  considerable  course,  the  continuity  of  an  artist's  endeavour, 
the  growth  of  his  whole  operative  consciousness  and,  best 
of  all,  perhaps,  their  own  tendency  to  multiply,  with  the 
implication,  thereby,  of  a  memory  much  enriched.  Addicted 
to  u  stories "  and  inclined  to  retrospect,  he  fondly  takes, 
under  this  backward  view,  his  whole  unfolding,  his  process 
of  production,  for  a  thrilling  tale,  almost  for  a  wondrous 
adventure,  only  asking  himself  at  what  stage  of  remembrance 
the  mark  of  the  relevant  will  begin  to  fail.  He  frankly 
proposes  to  take  this  mark  everywhere  for  granted. 

"  Roderick  Hudson  "  was  my  first  attempt  at  a  novel, 
a  long  fiction  with  a  "  complicated  "  subject,  and  I  recall 
again  the  quite  uplifted  sense  with  which  my  idea,  such  as 
it  was,  permitted  me  at  last  to  put  quite  out  to  sea.  I  had 
but  hugged  the  shore  on  sundry  previous  small  occasions  ; 
bumping  about,  to  acquire  skill,  in  the  shallow  waters  and 
sandy  coves  of  the  "  short  story  "  and  master  as  yet  of  no 
vessel  constructed  to  carry  a  sail.  The  subject  of  "  Rod 
erick"  figured  to  me  vividly  this  employment  of  canvas, 
and  I  have  not  forgotten,  even  after  long  years,  how  the 
blue  southern  sea  seemed  to  spread  immediately  before  me 
and  the  breath  of  the  spice-islands  to  be  already  in  the 
breeze.  Yet  it  must  even  then  have  begun  for  me  too,  the 
ache  of  fear,  that  was  to  become  so  familiar,  of  being  un 
duly  tempted  and  led  on  by  "  developments  "  ;  which  is  but 
the  desperate  discipline  of  the  question  involved  in  them. 
They  are  of  the  very  essence  of  the  novelist's  process,  and 
it  is  by  their  aid,  fundamentally,  that  his  idea  takes  form 
and  lives ;  but  they  impose  on  him,  through  the  principle 
of  continuity  that  rides  them,  a  proportionate  anxiety.  They 
are  the  very  condition  of  interest,  which  languishes  and 
drops  without  them ;  the  painter's  subject  consisting  ever, 

vi 


PREFACE 

obviously,  of  the  related  state,  to  each  other,  of  certain  fig 
ures  and  things.  To  exhibit  these  relations,  once  they  have 
all  been  recognised,  is  to  "  treat "  his  idea,  which  involves 
neglecting  none  of  those  that  directly  minister  to  interest ; 
the  degree  of  that  directness  remaining  meanwhile  a  matter 
of  highly  difficult  appreciation,  and  one  on  which  felicity  of 
form  and  composition,  as  a  part  of  the  total  effect,  merci 
lessly  rests.  Up  to  what  point  is  such  and  such  a  develop 
ment  indispensable  to  the  interest  ?  What  is  the  point  be 
yond  which  it  ceases  to  be  rigorously  so  ?  Where,  for  the 
complete  expression  of  one's  subject,  does  a  particular  rela 
tion  stop  —  giving  way  to  some  other  not  concerned  in  that 


expression 


Really,  universally,  relations  stop  nowhere,  and  the  ex 
quisite  problem  of  the  artist  is  eternally  but  to  draw,  by 
a  geometry  of  his  own,  the  circle  within  which  they  shall 
happily  appear  to  do  so.  He  is  in  the  perpetual  predicament 
that  the  continuity  of  things  is  the  whole  matter,  for  him, 
of  comedy  and  tragedy ;  that  this  continuity  is  never,  by 
the  space  of  an  instant  or  an  inch,  broken,  and  that,  to  do 
anything  at  all,  he  has  at  once  intensely  to  consult  and  in 
tensely  to  ignore  it.  All  of  which  will  perhaps  pass  but  for 
a  supersubtle  way  of  pointing  the  plain  moral  that  a  young 
embroiderer  of  the  canvas  of  life  soon  began  to  work  in 
terror,  fairly,  of  the  vast  expanse  of  that  surface,  of  the 
boundless  number  of  its  distinct  perforations  for  the  needle, 
and  of  the  tendency  inherent  in  his  many-coloured  flow 
ers  and  figures  to  cover  and  consume  as  many  as  possible 
of  the  little  holes.  The  development  of  the  flower,  of  the 
figure,  involved  thus  an  immense  counting  of  holes  and 
a  careful  selection  among  them.  That  would  have  been,  it 
seemed  to  him,  a  brave  enough  process,  were  it  not  the 
very  nature  of  the  holes  so  to  invite,  to  solicit,  to  persuade, 
to  practise  positively  a  thousand  lures  and  deceits.  The 
prime  effect  of  so  sustained  a  system,  so  prepared  a  sur 
face,  is  to  lead  on  and  on ;  while  the  fascination  of  fol 
lowing  resides,  by  the  same  token,  in  the  presumability 
somewhere  of  a  convenient,  of  a  visibly-appointed  stopping- 

vii 


PREFACE 

place.  Art  would  be  easy  indeed  if,  by  a  fond  power  dis 
posed  to  "  patronise  "  it,  such  conveniences,  such  simpli 
fications,  had  been  provided.  We  have,  as  the  case  stands, 
to  invent  and  establish  them,  to  arrive  at  them  by  a  diffi 
cult,  dire  process  of  selection  and  comparison,  of  surrender 
and  sacrifice.  The  very  meaning  of  expertness  is  acquired 
courage  to  brace  one's  self  for  the  cruel  crisis  from  the 
moment  one  sees  it  grimly  loom. 

"  Roderick  Hudson  "  was  further,  was  earnestly  pursued 
during  a  summer  partly  spent  in  the  Black  Forest  and  (as 
I  had  returned  to  America  early  in  September)  during  three 
months  passed  near  Boston.  It  is  one  of  the  silver  threads 
of  the  recoverable  texture  of  that  embarrassed  phase,  how 
ever,  that  the  book  was  not  finished  when  it  had  to  begin 
appearing  in  monthly  fragments  :  a  fact  in  the  light  of  which 
I  find  myself  live  over  again,  and  quite  with  wonderment 
and  tenderness,  so  intimate  an  experience  of  difficulty  and 
delay.  To  have  "  liked  "  so  much  writing  it,  to  have  worked 
out  with  such  conviction  the  pale  embroidery,  and  yet  not, 
at  the  end  of  so  many  months,  to  have  come  through, 
was  clearly  still  to  have  fallen  short  of  any  facility  and  any 
confidence :  though  the  long-drawn  process  now  most  ap 
peals  to  memory,  I  confess,  by  this  very  quality  of  shy  and 
groping  duration.  One  fact  about  it  indeed  outlives  all 
others ;  the  fact  that,  as  the  loved  Italy  was  the  scene  of 
my  fiction  —  so  much  more  loved  than  one  has  ever  been 
able,  even  after  fifty  efforts,  to  say  !  —  and  as  having  had 
to  leave  it  persisted  as  an  inward  ache,  so  there  was  soreness 
in  still  contriving,  after  a  fashion,  to  hang  about  it  and  in 
prolonging,  from  month  to  month,  the  illusion  of  the  golden 
air.  Little  enough  of  that  medium  may  the  novel,  read  over 
to-day,  seem  to  supply ;  yet  half  the  actual  interest  lurks 
for  me  in  the  earnest,  baffled  intention  of  making  it  felt. 
A  whole  side  of  the  old  consciousness,  under  this  mild 
pressure,  flushes  up  and  prevails  again  ;  a  reminder,  ever  so 
penetrating,  of  the  quantity  of  "  evocation  "  involved  in  my 
plan,  and  of  the  quantity  I  must  even  have  supposed  my 
self  to  achieve.  I  take  the  lingering  perception  of  all  this, 

viii 


PREFACE 

I  may  add  —  that  is  of  the  various  admonitions  of  the  whole 
reminiscence —  for  a  signal  instance  of  the  way  a  work  of 
art,  however  small,  if  but  sufficiently  sincere,  may  vivify 
and  even  dignify  the  accidents  and  incidents  of  its  growth. 

I  must  that  winter  (which  I  again  like  to  put  on  record 
that  I  spent  in  New  York)  have  brought  up  my  last  instal 
ments  in  due  time,  for  I  recall  no  haunting  anxiety  :  what 
I  do  recall  perfectly  is  the  felt  pleasure,  during  those  months 
—  and  in  East  Twenty-fifth  Street !  —  of  trying,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  world,  still  to  surround  with  the  appropriate 
local  glow  the  characters  that  had  combined,  to  my  vision, 
the  previous  year  in  Florence.  A  benediction,  a  great  ad 
vantage,  as  seemed  to  me,  had  so  from  the  first  rested  on 
them,  and  to  nurse  them  along  was  really  to  sit  again  in  the 
high,  charming,  shabby  old  room  which  had  originally  over 
arched  them  and  which,  in  the  hot  May  and  June,  had 
looked  out,  through  the  slits  of  cooling  shutters,  at  the 
rather  dusty  but  ever-romantic  glare  of  Piazza.  Santa  Maria 
Novella.  The  house  formed  the  corner  (I  delight  to  spe 
cify)  of  Via  della  Scala,  and  I  fear  that  what  the  early 
chapters  of  the  book  most  "  render "  to  me  to-day  is  not 
the  umbrageous  air  of  their  New  England  town,  but  the 
view  of  the  small  cab-stand  sleepily  disposed  —  long  before 
the  days  of  strident  electric  cars  —  round  the  rococo  obelisk 
of  the  Piazza,  which  is  supported  on  its  pedestal,  if  I  re-  . 
member  rightly,  by  four  delightful  little  elephants.  (That, 
at  any  rate,  is  how  the  object  in  question,  deprecating  veri 
fication,  comes  back  to  me  with  the  clatter  of  the  horse- 
pails,  the  discussions,  in  the  intervals  of  repose  under  well- 
drawn  hoods,  of  the  unbuttoned  cocchieri,  sons  of  the  most  j 
garrulous  of  races,  and  the  occasional  stillness  as  of  the  ' 
noonday  desert.) 

Pathetic,  as  we  say,  on  the  other  hand,  no  doubt,  to  re- 
perusal,  the  manner  in  which  the  evocation,  so  far  as  at 
tempted,  of  the  small  New  England  town  of  my  first  two 
chapters,  fails  of  intensity  —  if  intensity,  in  such  a  connex 
ion,  had  been  indeed  to  be  looked  for.  Could  I  verily,  by 
the  terms  of  my  little  plan,  have  "  gone  in  "  for  it  at  the 

ix 


PREFACE 

best,  and  even  though  one  of  these  terms  was  the  projection, 
for  my  fable,  at  the  outset,  of  some  more  or  less  vivid  an 
tithesis  to  a  state  of  civilisation  providing  for  "  art  "  ?  What 
I  wanted,  in  essence,  was  the  image  of  some  perfectly 
humane  community  which  was  yet  all  incapable  of  provid 
ing  for  it,  and  I  had  to  take  what  my  scant  experience  fur 
nished  me.  I  remember  feeling  meanwhile  no  drawback  in 
this  scantness,  but  a  complete,  an  exquisite  little  adequacy', 
so  that  the  presentation  arrived  at  would  quite  have  served 
its  purpose,  I  think,  had  I  not  misled  myself  into  naming 
my  place.  To  name  a  place,  in  fiction,  is  to  pretend  in 
some  degree  to  represent  it  —  and  I  speak  here  of  course 
but  of  the  use  of  existing  names,  the  only  ones  that  carry 
weight.  I  wanted  one  that  carried  weight  —  so  at  least  I 
supposed ;  but  obviously  I  was  wrong,  since  my  effect  lay, 
so  superficially,  and  could  only  lie,  in  the  local  type,  as  to 
which  I  had  my  handful  of  impressions.  The  particular 
local  case  was  another  matter,  and  I  was  to  see  again,  after 
long  years,  the  case  into  which,  all  recklessly,  the  opening 
passages  of  u  Roderick  Hudson  "  put  their  foot.  I  was  to 
have  nothing  then,  on  the  spot,  to  sustain  me  but  the  rather 
feeble  plea  that  I  had  not  pretended  so  very  much  to  "  do  " 
Northampton  Mass.  The  plea  was  charmingly  allowed, 
but  nothing  could  have  been  more  to  the  point  than  the 
way  in  which,  in  such  a  situation,  the  whole  question  of 
the  novelist's  "  doing,"  with  its  eternal  wealth,  or  in  other 
words  its  eternal  torment  of  interest,  once  more  came  up. 
He  embarks,  rash  adventurer,  under  the  star  of  "  repre 
sentation,"  and  is  pledged  thereby  to  remember  that  the  art 
of  interesting  us  in  things  —  once  these  things  are  the 
right  ones  for  his  case  —  can  only  be  the  art  of  representing 
them.  This  relation  to  them,  for  invoked  interest,  involves 
his  accordingly  "  doing "  j  and  it  is  for  him  to  settle  with 
his  intelligence  what  that  variable  process  shall  commit 
him  to. 

Its  fortune  rests  primarily,  beyond  doubt,  on  somebody's 
having,  under  suggestion,  a  sense  for  it — even  the  reader 
will  do,  on  occasion,  when  the  writer,  as  so  often  happens, 

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PREFACE 

completely  falls  out.  The  way  in  which  this  sense  has 
been,  or  has  not  been,  applied  constitutes,  at  all  events, 
in  respect  to  any  fiction,  the  very  ground  of  critical  appre 
ciation.  Such  appreciation  takes  account,  primarily,  of  the 
thing,  in  the  case,  to  have  been  done,  and  I  now  see  what, 
for  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  "  Roderick,"  that  was. 
It  was  a  peaceful,  rural  New  England  community  quelconque 
—  it  was  not,  it  was  under  no  necessity  of  being,  North 
ampton  Mass.  But  one  nestled,  technically,  in  those  days, 
and  with  yearning,  in  the  great  shadow  of  Balzac ;  his 
august  example,  little  as  the  secret  might  ever  be  guessed, 
towered  for  me  over  the  scene ;  so  that  what  was  clearer 
than  anything  else  was  how,  if  it  was  a  question  of  Saumur, 
of  Limoges,  of  Guerande,  he  "  did  "  Saumur,  did  Limoges, 
did  Guerande.  I  remember  how,  in  my  feebler  fashion,  I 
yearned  over  the  preliminary  presentation  of  my  small 
square  patch  of  the  American  scene,  and  yet  was  not  suf 
ficiently  on  my  guard  to  see  how  easily  his  high  practice 
might  be  delusive  for  my  case.  Balzac  talked  of  Nemours 
and  Provins  :  therefore  why  shouldn't  one,  with  fond  fatu 
ity,  talk  of  almost  the  only  small  American  ville  de  province 
of  which  one  had  happened  to  lay  up,  long  before,  a  pleased 
vision  ?  The  reason  was  plain  :  one  was  not  in  the  least, 
in  one's  prudence,  emulating  his  systematic  closeness.  It 
did  n't  confuse  the  question  either  that  he  would  verily, 
after  all,  addressed  as  he  was  to  a  due  density  in  his  mate 
rial,  have  found  little  enough  in  Northampton  Mass  to 
tackle.  He  tackled  no  group  of  appearances,  no  presented 
face  of  the  social  organism  (conspicuity  thus  attending  it), 
but  to  make  something  of  it.  To  name  it  simply  and  not 
in  some  degree  tackle  it  would  have  seemed  to  him  an  act 
reflecting  on  his  general  course  the  deepest  dishonour. 
Therefore  it  was  that,  as  the  moral  of  these  many  re 
marks,  I  "  named,"  under  his  contagion,  when  I  was  really 
most  conscious  of  not  being  held  to  it ;  and  therefore  it 
was,  above  all,  that  for  all  the  effect  of  representation  I 
was  to  achieve,  I  might  have  let  the  occasion  pass.  A 
"fancy"  indication  would  have  served  my  turn  —  except 

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PREFACE 

that  I  should  so  have  failed  perhaps  of  a  pretext  for  my 
present  insistence. 

Since  I  do  insist,  at  all  events,  I  find  this  ghostly  interest 
perhaps  even  more  reasserted  for  me  by  the  questions  be 
gotten  within  the  very  covers  of  the  book,  those  that  wan 
der  and  idle  there  as  in  some  sweet  old  overtangled  walled 
garden,  a  safe  paradise  of  self-criticism.  Here  it  is  that  if 
there  be  air  for  it  to  breathe  at  all,  the  critical  question 
swarms,  and  here  it  is,  in  particular,  that  one  of  the  happy 
hours  of  the  painter's  long  day  may  strike.  I  speak  of  the 
painter  in  general  and  of  his  relation  to  the  old  picture,  the 
work  of  his  hand,  that  has  been  lost  to  sight  and  that,  when 
found  again,  is  put  back  on  the  easel  for  measure  of  what 
time  and  the  weather  may,  in  the  interval,  have  done  to  it. 
Has  it  too  fatally  faded,  has  it  blackened  or  "  sunk,"  or 
otherwise  abdicated,  or  has  it  only,  blest  thought,  strength 
ened,  for  its  allotted  duration,  and  taken  up,  in  its  degree, 
poor  dear  brave  thing,  some  shade  of  the  all  appreciable, 
yet  all  indescribable  grace  that  we  know  as  pictorial "  tone"  ? 
The  anxious  artist  has  to  wipe  it  over,  in  the  first  place, 
to  see ;  he  has  to  "  clean  it  up,"  say,  or  to  varnish  it  anew, 
or  at  the  least  to  place  it  in  a  light,  for  any  right  judgement 
of  its  aspect  or  its  worth.  But  the  very  uncertainties  them 
selves  yield  a  thrill,  and  if  subject  and  treatment,  working 
together,  have  had  their  felicity,  the  artist,  the  prime  creator, 
may  find  a  strange  charm  in  this  stage  of  the  connexion. 
It  helps  him  to  live  back  into  a  forgotten  state,  into  con 
victions,  credulities  too  early  spent  perhaps,  it  breathes  upon 
the  dead  reasons  of  things,  buried  as  they  are  in  the  texture 
of  the  work,  and  makes  them  revive,  so  that  the  actual 
appearances  and  the  old  motives  fall  together  once  more, 
and  a  lesson  and  a  moral  and  a  consecrating  final  light  are 
somehow  disengaged. 

All  this,  I  mean  of  course,  if  the  case  will  wonderfully 
take  any  such  pressure,  if  the  work  does  n't  break  down 
under  even  such  mild  overhauling.  The  author  knows  well 
enough  how  easily  that  may  happen  —  which  he  in  fact 
frequently  enough  sees  it  do.  The  old  reasons  then  are  too 

xii 


PREFACE 

dead  to  revive  ;  they  were  not,  it  is  plain,  good  enough 
reasons  to  live.  The  only  possible  relation  of  the  present 
mind  to  the  thing  is  to  dismiss  it  altogether.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  it  is  not  dismissed  —  as  the  only  detachment  is 
the  detachment  of  aversion  —  the  creative  intimacy  is  re 
affirmed,  and  appreciation,  critical  apprehension,  insists  on 
becoming  as  active  as  it  can.  Who  shall  say,  granted  this, 
where  it  shall  not  begin  and  where  it  shall  consent  to  end? 
The  painter  who  passes  over  his  old  sunk  canvas  the  wet 
sponge  that  shows  him  what  may  still  come  out  again  makes 
his  criticism  essentially  active.  When  having  seen,  while 
his  momentary  glaze  remains,  that  the  canvas  has  kept  a 
few  buried  secrets,  he  proceeds  to  repeat  the  process  with 
due  care  and  with  a  bottle  of  varnish  and  a  brush,  he  is 
"  living  back,"  as  I  say,  to  the  top  of  his  bent,  is  taking 
up  the  old  relation,  so  workable  apparently,  yet,  and  there 
is  nothing  logically  to  stay  him  from  following  it  all  the  way. 
I  have  felt  myself  then,  on  looking  over  past  productions, 
the  painter  making  use  again  and  again  of  the  tentative  wet 
sponge.  The  sunk  surface  has  here  and  there,  beyond 
doubt,  refused  to  respond  :  the  buried  secrets,  the  inten 
tions,  are  buried  too  deep  to  rise  again,  and  were  indeed,  it 
would  appear,  not  much  worth  the  burying.  Not  so,  how 
ever,  when  the  moistened  canvas  does  obscurely  flush  and 
when  resort  to  the  varnish-bottle  is  thereby  immediately 
indicated.  The  simplest  figure  for  my  revision  of  this  pre 
sent  array  of  earlier,  later,  larger,  smaller,  canvases,  is  to  say 
that  I  have  achieved  it  by  the  very  aid  of  the  varnish-bottle. 
It  is  true  of  them  throughout  that,  in  words  I  have  had  oc 
casion  to  use  in  another  connexion  (where  too  I  had  revised 
with  a  view  to  "  possible  amendment  of  form  and  enhance 
ment  of  meaning  ") ,  I  have  "  nowhere  scrupled  to  re-write 
a  sentence  or  a  passage  on  judging  it  susceptible  of  a  better 
turn." 

To  re-read  "  Roderick  Hudson  "  was  to  find  one  remark 
so  promptly  and  so  urgently  prescribed  that  I  could  at  once 
only  take  it  as  pointing  almost  too  stern  a  moral.  It  stared 
me  in  the  face  that  the  time-scheme  of  the  story  is  quite 

xiii 


PREFACE 

inadequate,  and  positively  to  that  degree  that  the  fault  but 
just  fails  to  wreck  it.  The  thing  escapes,  I  conceive,  with 
its  life  :  the  effect  sought  is  fortunately  more  achieved  than 
missed,  since  the  interest  of  the  subject  bears  down,  auspi 
ciously  dissimulates,  this  particular  flaw  in  the  treatment. 
Everything  occurs,  none  the  less,  too  punctually  and  moves 
too  fast :  Roderick's  disintegration,  a  gradual  process,  and 
of  which  the  exhibitional  interest  is  exactly  that  it  is  grad 
ual  and  occasional,  and  thereby  traceable  and  watchable, 
swallows  two  years  in  a  mouthful,  proceeds  quite  not  by 
years,  but  by  weeks  and  months,  and  thus  renders  the  whole 
view  the  disservice  of  appearing  to  present  him  as  a  morbidly 
special  case.  The  very  claim  of  the  fable  is  naturally  that 
he  is  special,  that  his  great  gift  makes  and  keeps  him  highly 
exceptional ;  but  that  is  not  for  a  moment  supposed  to  pre 
clude  his  appearing  typical  (of  the  general  type)  as  well ;  for 
the  fictive  hero  successfully  appeals  to  us  only  as  an  eminent 
instance,  as  eminent  as  we  like,  of  our  own  conscious  kind. 
My  mistake  on  Roderick's  behalf —  and  not  in  the  least  of 
conception,  but  of  composition  and  expression  —  is  that,  at 
the  rate  at  which  he  falls  to  pieces,  he  seems  to  place  him 
self  beyond  our  understanding  and  our  sympathy.  These 
are  not  our  rates,  we  say ;  we  ourselves  certainly,  under  like 
pressure,  —  for  what  is  it  after  all  ?  —  would  make  more  of 
a  fight.  We  conceive  going  to  pieces  —  nothing  is  easier, 
since  we  see  people  do  it,  one  way  or  another,  all  round 
us  ;  but  this  young  man  must  either  have  had  less  of  the 
principle  of  development  to  have  had  so  much  of  the  prin 
ciple  of  collapse,  or  less  of  the  principle  of  collapse  to  have 
had  so  much  of  the  principle  of  development.  "  On  the 
basis  of  so  great  a  weakness,"  one  hears  the  reader  say, 
"  where  was  your  idea  of  the  interest  ?  On  the  basis  of  so 
great  an  interest,  where  is  the  provision  for  so  much  weak 
ness  ? "  One  feels  indeed,  in  the  light  of  this  challenge,  on 
how  much  too  scantly  projected  and  suggested  a  field  poor 
Roderick  and  his  large  capacity  for  ruin  are  made  to  turn 
round.  It  has  all  begun  too  soon,  as  I  say,  and  too  simply, 
and  the  determinant  function  attributed  to  Christina  Light, 

xiv 


PREFACE 

the  character  of  well-nigh  sole  agent  of  his  catastrophe  that 
this  unfortunate  young  woman  has  forced  upon  her,  fails  to 
commend  itself  to  our  sense  of  truth  and  proportion. 

It  was  not,  however,  that  I  was  at  ease  on  this  score  even 
in  the  first  fond  good  faith  of  composition ;  I  felt  too,  all 
the  while,  how  many  more  ups  and  downs,  how  many  more 
adventures  and  complications  my  young  man  would  have 
had  to  know,  how  much  more  experience  it  would  have 
taken,  in  short,  either  to  make  him  go  under  or  to  make 
him  triumph.  The  greater  complexity,  the  superior  truth, 
was  all  more  or  less  present  to  me ;  only  the  question  was, 
too  dreadfully,  how  make  it  present  to  the  reader  ?  How 
boil  down  so  many  facts  in  the  alembic,  so  that  the  distilled 
result,  the  produced  appearance,  should  have  intensity,  lucid 
ity,  brevity,  beauty,  all  the  merits  required  for  my  effect  ? 
How,  when  it  was  already  so  difficult,  as  I  found,  to  pro 
ceed  even  as  I  was  proceeding  ?  It  did  n't  help,  alas,  it  only 
maddened,  to  remember  that  Balzac  would  have  known 
how,  and  would  have  yet  asked  no  additional  credit  for  it. 
All  the  difficulty  I  could  dodge  still  struck  me,  at  any  rate, 
as  leaving  more  than  enough ;  and  yet  I  was  already  con 
sciously  in  presence,  here,  of  the  most  interesting  question 
the  artist  has  to  consider.  To  give  the  image  and  the  sense 
of  certain  things  while  still  keeping  them  subordinate  to  his 
plan,  keeping  them  in  relation  to  matters  more  immediate 
and  apparent,  to  give  all  the  sense,  in  a  word,  without  all 
the  substance  or  all  the  surface,  and  so  to  summarise  and 
foreshorten,  so  to  make  values  both  rich  and  sharp,  that  the 
mere  procession  of  items  and  profiles  is  not  only,  for  the 
occasion,  superseded,  but  is,  for  essential  quality,  almost 
"compromised"  —  such  a  case  of  delicacy  proposes  itself 
at  every  turn  to  the  painter  of  life  who  wishes  both  to  treat 
his  chosen  subject  and  to  confine  his  necessary  picture.  It 
is  only  by  doing  such  things  that  art  becomes  exquisite,  and 
it  is  only  by  positively  becoming  exquisite  that  it  keeps  clear 
of  becoming  vulgar,  repudiates  the  coarse  industries  that 
masquerade  in  its  name.  This  eternal  time-question  is 
accordingly,  for  the  novelist,  always  there  and  always  for- 

XV 


PREFACE 

midable  ;  always  insisting  on  the  effect  of  the  great  lapse  and 
passage,  of  the  "  dark  backward  and  abysm,"  by  the  terms 
of  truth,  and  on  the  effect  of  compression,  of  composition 
and  form,  by  the  terms  of  literary  arrangement.  It  is  really 
a  business  to  terrify  all  but  stout  hearts  into  abject  omission 
and  mutilation,  though  the  terror  would  indeed  be  more 
general  were  the  general  consciousness  of  the  difficulty 
greater.  It  is  not  by  consciousness  of  difficulty,  in  truth, 
that  the  story-teller  is  mostly  ridden ;  so  prodigious  a  num 
ber  of  stories  would  otherwise  scarce  get  themselves  (shall 
it  be  called  ?)  "  told."  None  was  ever  very  well  told,  I 
think,  under  the  law  of  mere  elimination  —  inordinately  as 
that  device  appears  in  many  quarters  to  be  depended  on. 
I  remember  doing  my  best  not  to  be  reduced  to  it  for 
41  Roderick,"  at  the  same  time  that  I  did  so  helplessly  and 
consciously  beg  a  thousand  questions.  What  I  clung  to  as 
my  principle  of  simplification  was  the  precious  truth  that 
I  was  dealing,  after  all,  essentially  with  an  Action,  and  that 
no  action,  further,  was  ever  made  historically  vivid  without 
a  certain  factitious  compactness;  though  this  logic  indeed 
opened  up  horizons  and  abysses  of  its  own.  But  into  these 
we  must  plunge  on  some  other  occasion. 

It  was  at  any  rate  under  an  admonition  or  two  fished  out 
of  their  depths  that  I  must  have  tightened  my  hold  of  the 
remedy  afforded,  such  as  it  was,  for  the  absence  of  those 
more  adequate  illustrations  of  Roderick's  character  and  his 
tory.  Since  one  was  dealing  with  an  Action  one  might 
borrow  a  scrap  of  the  Dramatist's  all-in-all,  his  intensity 
—  which  the  novelist  so  often  ruefully  envies  him  as  a  for 
tune  in  itself.  The  amount  of  illustration  I  could  allow  to 
the  grounds  of  my  young  man's  disaster  was  unquestionably 
meagre,  but  I  might  perhaps  make  it  lively ;  I  might  pro 
duce  illusion  if  I  should  be  able  to  achieve  intensity.  It  was 
for  that  I  must  have  tried,  I  now  see,  with  such  art  as  I 
could  command ;  but  I  make  out  in  another  quarter  above 
all  what  really  saved  me.  My  subject,  all  blissfully,  in  face 
of  difficulties,  had  defined  itself — and  this  in  spite  of  the  title 
of  the  book  —  as  not  directly,  in  the  least,  my  young  sculp- 

xvi 


PREFACE 

tor's  adventure.  This  it  had  been  but  indirectly,  being  all  the 
while  in  essence  and  in  final  effect  another  man's,  his 
friend's  and  patron's,  view  and  experience  of  him.  One's 
luck  was  to  have  felt  one's  subject  right  —  whether  instinct 
or  calculation,  in  those  dim  days,  most  served  ;  and  the  cir 
cumstance  even  amounts  perhaps  to  a  little  lesson  that  when 
this  has  happily  occurred  faults  may  show,  faults  may  dis 
figure,  and  yet  not  upset  the  work.  It  remains  in  equilib 
rium  by  having  found  its  centre,  the  point  of  command  of 
all  the  rest.  From  this  centre  the  subject  has  been  treated, 
from  this  centre  the  interest  has  spread,  and  so,  whatever 
else  it  may  do  or  may  not  do,  the  thing  has  acknowledged 
a  principle  of  composition  and  contrives  at  least  to  hang  to 
gether.  We  see  in  such  a  case  why  it  should  so  hang ;  we 
escape  that  dreariest  displeasure  it  is  open  to  experiments 
in  this  general  order  to  inflict,  the  sense  of  any  hanging- 
together  precluded  as  by  the  very  terms  of  the  case. 

The  centre  of  interest  throughout  "  Roderick "  is  in 
Rowland  Mallet's  consciousness,  and  the  drama  is  the  very 
drama  of  that  consciousness  —  which  I  had  of  course  to 
make  sufficiently  acute  in  order  to  enable  it,  like  a  set  and 
lighted  scene,  to  hold  the  play.  By  making  it  acute,  mean 
while,  one  made  its  own  movement  —  or  rather,  strictly, 
its  movement  in  the  particular  connexion  —  interesting; 
this  movement  really  being  quite  the  stuff  of  one's  thesis. 
It  had,  naturally,  Rowland's  consciousness,  not  to  be  too 
acute  —  which  would  have  disconnected  it  and  made  it 
superhuman  :  the  beautiful  little  problem  was  to  keep  it 
connected,  connected  intimately,  with  the  general  human 
exposure,  and  thereby  bedimmed  and  befooled  and  bewil 
dered,  anxious,  restless,  fallible,  and  yet  to  endow  it  with 
such  intelligence  that  the  appearances  reflected  in  it,  and 
constituting  together  there  the  situation  and  the  "  story," 
should  become  by  that  fact  intelligible.  Discernible  from 
the  first  the  joy  of  such  a  "job"  as  this  making  of  his  re 
lation  to  everything  involved  a  sufficiently  limited,  a  suffi 
ciently  pathetic,  tragic,  comic,  ironic,  personal  state  to  be 
thoroughly  natural,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  a  sufficiently 

xvii 


PREFACE 

clear  medium  to  represent  a  whole.  This  whole  was  to  be 
the  sum  of  what  "  happened  "  to  him,  or  in  other  words 
his  total  adventure ;  but  as  what  happened  to  him  was  above 
all  to  feel  certain  things  happening  to  others,  to  Roderick, 
to  Christina,  to  Mary  Garland,  to  Mrs.  Hudson,  to  the 
Cavaliere,  to  the  Prince,  so  the  beauty  of  the  constructional 
game  was  to  preserve  in  everything  its  especial  value  for 
him.  The  ironic  effect  of  his  having  fallen  in  love  with 
the  girl  who  is  herself  in  love  with  Roderick,  though  he  is 
unwitting,  at  the  time,  of  that  secret  —  the  conception  of 
this  last  irony,  I  must  add,  has  remained  happier  than  my 
execution  of  it ;  which  should  logically  have  involved  the 
reader's  being  put  into  position  to  take  more  closely  home 
the  impression  made  by  Mary  Garland.  The  ground  has 
not  been  laid  for  it,  and  when  that  is  the  case  one  builds 
all  vainly  in  the  air :  one  patches  up  one's  superstructure, 
one  paints  it  in  the  prettiest  colours,  one  hangs  fine  old 
tapestry  and  rare  brocade  over  its  window-sills,  one  flies 
emblazoned  banners  from  its  roof —  the  building  none  the 
less  totters  and  refuses  to  stand  square. 

It  is  not  really  worked-in  that  Roderick  himself  could 
have  pledged  his  faith  in  such  a  quarter,  much  more  at  such 
a  crisis,  before  leaving  America  :  and  that  weakness,  clearly, 
produces  a  limp  in  the  whole  march  of  the  fable.  Just  so, 
though  there  was  no  reason  on  earth  (unless  I  except  one, 
presently  to  be  mentioned)  why  Rowland  should  not,  at 
Northampton,  have  conceived  a  passion,  or  as  near  an  ap 
proach  to  one  as  he  was  capable  of,  for  a  remarkable  young 
woman  there  suddenly  dawning  on  his  sight,  a  particular 
fundamental  care  was  required  for  the  vivification  of  that 
possibility.  The  care,  unfortunately,  has  not  been  skilfully 
enough  taken,  in  spite  of  the  later  patching-up  of  the  girl's 
figure.  We  fail  to  accept  it,  on  the  actual  showing,  as  that 
of  a  young  person  irresistible  at  any  moment,  and  above  all 
irresistible  at  a  moment  of  the  liveliest  other  preoccupation, 
as  that  of  the  weaver  of  (even  the  highly  conditioned)  spell 
that  the  narrative  imputes  to  her.  The  spell  of  attraction 
is  cast  upon  young  men  by  young  women  in  all  sorts  of 

xviii 


PREFACE 

ways,  and  the  novel  has  no  more  constant  office  than  to 
remind  us  of  that.  But  Mary  Garland's  way  does  n't,  in 
dubitably,  convince  us ;  any  more  than  we  are  truly  con 
vinced,  I  think,  that  Rowland's  destiny,  or  say  his  nature, 
would  have  made  him  accessible  at  the  same  hour  to  two 
quite  distinct  commotions,  each  a  very  deep  one,  of  his 
whole  personal  economy.  Rigidly  viewed,  each  of  these 
upheavals  of  his  sensibility  must  have  been  exclusive  of 
other  upheavals,  yet  the  reader  is  asked  to  accept  them  as 
working  together.  They  are  different  vibrations,  but  the 
whole  sense  of  the  situation  depicted  is  that  they  should 
each  have  been  of  the  strongest,  too  strong  to  walk  hand  in 
hand.  Therefore  it  is  that  when,  on  the  ship,  under  the 
stars,  Roderick  suddenly  takes  his  friend  into  the  confidence 
of  his  engagement,  we  instinctively  disallow  the  friend's 
title  to  discomfiture.  The  whole  picture  presents  him  as 
for  the  time  on  the  mounting  wave,  exposed  highly  enough, 
no  doubt,  to  a  hundred  discomfitures,  but  least  exposed  to 
that  one.  The  damage  to  verisimilitude  is  deep. 

The  difficulty  had  been  from  the  first  that  I  required  my 
antithesis  —  my  antithesis  to  Christina  Light,  one  of  the 
main  terms  of  the  subject.  One  is  ridden  by  the  law  that 
antitheses,  to  be  efficient,  shall  be  both  direct  and  complete. 
Directness  seemed  to  fail  unless  Mary  should  be,  so  to 
speak,  "  plain,"  Christina  being  essentially  so  "  coloured  "; 
and  completeness  seemed  to  fail  unless  she  too  should  have 
her  potency.  She  could  moreover,  by  which  I  mean  the 
antithetic  young  woman  could,  perfectly  have  had  it ;  only 
success  would  have  been  then  in  the  narrator's  art  to  attest 
it.  Christina's  own  presence  and  action  are,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  think,  all  firm  ground ;  the  truth  probably  being 
that  the  ideal  antithesis  rarely  does  "  come  off,"  and  that  it 
has  to  content  itself  for  the  most  part  with  a  strong  term 
and  a  weak  term,  and  even  then  to  feel  itself  lucky.  If  one 
of  the  terms  is  strong,  that  perhaps  may  pass,  in  the  most 
difficult  of  the  arts,  for  a  triumph.  I  remember  at  all  events 
feeling,  toward  the  end  of  "  Roderick,"  that  the  Princess 
Casamassima  had  been  launched,  that,  wound-up  with  the 

xix 


PREFACE 

right  silver  key,  she  would  go  on  a  certain  time  by  the  mo 
tion  communicated  ;  thanks  to  which  I  knew  the  pity,  the 
real  pang  of  losing  sight  of  her.  I  desired  as  in  no  other 
such  case  I  can  recall  to  preserve,  to  recover  the  vision  ; 
and  I  have  seemed  to  myself  in  re-reading  the  book  quite 
to  understand  why.  The  multiplication  of  touches  had 
produced  even  more  life  than  the  subject  required,  and  that 
life,  in  other  conditions,  in  some  other  prime  relation,  would 
still  have  somehow  to  be  spent.  Thus  one  would  watch 
for  her  and  waylay  her  at  some  turn  of  the  road  to  come  — 
all  that  was  to  be  needed  was  to  give  her  time.  This  I  did 
in  fact,  meeting  her  again  and  taking  her  up  later  on. 

HENRY  JAMES. 


RODERICK  HUDSON 


RODERICK   HUDSON 


ROWLAND  MALLET  had  made  his  arrangements  to 
sail  for  Europe  on  the  5th  of  September,  and  having 
in  the  interval  a  fortnight  to  spare,  he  determined 
to  spend  it  with  his  cousin  Cecilia,  the  widow  of  a 
nephew  of  his  father.  He  was  urged  by  the  reflexion 
that  an  affectionate  farewell  might  help  to  exoner 
ate  him  from  the  charge  of  neglect  frequently  pre 
ferred  by  this  lady.  It  was  not  that  the  young  man 
disliked  her;  he  regarded  her,  on  the  contrary, 
with  a  tender  admiration  and  had  not  forgotten  how 
when  his  cousin  brought  her  home  on  her  marriage 
he  seemed  to  feel  the  upward  sweep  of  the  empty 
bough  from  which  the  golden  fruit  had  been  plucked. 
He  then  and  there,  for  himself,  accepted  the  pro 
spect  of  bachelorhood.  The  truth  was  that,  as  it 
will  be  part  of  the  entertainment  of  this  narrative  to 
exhibit,  Rowland  Mallet  had  an  uncomfortably  sen 
sitive  conscience,  and  that,  in  spite  of  the  seeming 
paradox,  his  visits  to  Cecilia  were  rare  because  she 
and  her  misfortunes  were  often  uppermost  in  it. 
Her  misfortunes  were  three  in  number:  first,  she 
had  lost  her  husband;  second,  she  had  lost  her 
money,  or  the  greater  part  of  it;  and  third,  she  lived 
at  Northampton,  Massachusetts.  Mallet's  compas 
sion  was  really  wasted,  because  Cecilia  was  a  very 

i 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

clever  woman  and  a  skilful  counter-plotter  to  ad 
versity.  She  had  made  herself  a  charming  home, 
her  economies  were  not  obtrusive,  and  there  was 
always  a  cheerful  flutter  in  the  folds  of  her  crape.  It 
was  the  consciousness  of  all  this  that  puzzled  Mallet 
whenever  he  felt  tempted  to  put  in  his  oar.  He  had 
money  and  he  had  time,  but  he  never  could  decide  just 
how  to  place  these  gifts  gracefully  at  Cecilia's  service. 
He  was  no  longer  at  all  in  the  humour  to  marry  her; 
that  fancy  had  in  these  eight  years  died  a  very  nat 
ural  death.  And  yet  her  extreme  cleverness  seemed 
somehow  to  make  charity  difficult  and  patronage 
impossible.  He  would  rather  have  chopped  off  his 
hand  than  offer  her  a  cheque,  a  piece  of  useful  fur 
niture  or  a  black  silk  dress;  and  yet  there  was  pity 
for  him  in  seeing  such  a  bright  proud  woman  live 
in  such  a  small  dull  way.  Cecilia  had  moreover  a 
turn  for  sarcasm,  and  her  smile,  which  was  her 
pretty  feature,  was  never  so  pretty  as  when  her 
sprightly  phrase  had  a  lurking  scratch  in  it.  Row 
land  remembered  that  for  him  she  was  all  smiles, 
and  suspected  awkwardly  that  he  ministered  not  a 
little  to  her  sense  of  the  irony  of  things.  And  in  truth, 
with  his  means,  his  leisure  and  his  opportunities, 
what  had  he  done  ?  He  had  a  lively  suspicion  of  his 
uselessness.  Cecilia  meanwhile  cut  out  her  own 
dresses,  and  was  personally  giving  her  little  girl  the 
education  of  a  princess. 

This  time,  however,  he  presented  himself  bravely 

enough;    for  in  the  way  of  activity  it  was  something 

definite  at  least  to  be  going  to  Europe  and  to  be 

meaning  to  spend  the  winter  in  Rome.    Cecilia  met 

•      2 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

him  in  the  early  dusk  at  the  gate  of  her  little  garden, 
amid  a  studied  combination  of  horticultural  odours. 
A  rosy  widow  of  twenty-eight,  half-cousin,  half- 
hostess,  doing  the  honours  of  a  fragrant  cottage  on 
a  midsummer  evening,  was  a  phenomenon  to  which 
all  the  young  man's  senses  were  able  to  rise.  Cecilia 
was  always  gracious,  but  this  evening  she  was  posi 
tively  in  spirits.  She  was  in  a  happy  mood,  and 
Mallet  imagined  there  was  a  private  reason  for  it 
—  a  reason  quite  distinct  from  her  pleasure  in  re 
ceiving  her  honoured  kinsman.  The  next  day  he 
flattered  himself  he  was  on  the  way  to  discover  it. 

For  the  present,  after  tea,  as  they  sat  on  the  rose- 
framed  porch,  while  Rowland  held  his  younger 
cousin  between  his  knees,  and  she,  enjoying  her  situ 
ation,  listened  timorously  for  the  stroke  of  bedtime, 
Cecilia  insisted  on  talking  more  about  her  visitor 
than  about  herself.  "What  is  it  you  mean  to  do 
in  Europe  ?"  she  asked  lightly,  giving  a  turn  to  the 
frill  of  her  sleeve  —  just  such  a  turn  as  seemed  to 
Mallet  to  bring  out  all  the  latent  difficulties  of  the 
question. 

"Why,  very  much  what  I  do  here,"  he  answered. 
"No  great  harm!" 

"Is  it  true,"  Cecilia  asked,  "that  here  you  do  no 
great  harm  ?  Is  n't  a  man  like  you  doing  a  certain 
harm  when  he  is  n't  doing  some  positive  good  ?" 

"Isn't  that  compliment  rather  ambiguous?"  he 
inquired  in  return. 

"No,"  she  answered,  "you  know  what  I  think 
of  you.  You  have  a  turn  for  doing  nice  things  and 
behaving  yourself  properly.  You  have  it,  in  the  first 

3 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

place,  in  your  character.  You  mean,  if  you  will 
pardon  my  putting  it  so,  thoroughly  well.  Ask  Bessie 
if  you  don't  hold  her  more  gently  and  comfortably 
than  any  of  her  other  admirers." 

"He  holds  me  more  comfortably  than  Mr.  Hudson," 
Bessie  declared  roundly. 

Rowland,  not  knowing  Mr.  Hudson,  could  but 
half  appreciate  the  eulogy,  and  Cecilia  went  on  to 
develop  her  idea.  "Your  circumstances,  in  the  second 
place,  suggest  the  idea  of  some  sort  of  social  useful 
ness.  You  're  intelligent  and  are  well  informed,  and 
your  benevolence,  if  one  may  call  it  benevolence, 
would  be  discriminating.  You  're  rich  and  unoccu 
pied,  so  that  it  might  be  abundant.  Therefore  I  say 
you  're  a  man  to  do  something  on  a  large  scale. 
Bestir  yourself,  dear  Rowland,  or  we  may  be  taught 
to  think  that  Virtue  herself  is  setting  a  bad  example." 

"Heaven  forbid,"  cried  Rowland,  "that  I  should 
set  the  examples  of  virtue !  I  'm  quite  willing  to  follow 
them,  however,  and  if  I  don't  do  something  on  the 
grand  scale  it  is  that  my  genius  is  altogether  imita 
tive  and  that  I've  not  recently  encountered  any  very 
striking  models  of  grandeur.  Pray,  what  shall  I  do  ? 
Found  an  orphan  asylum  or-  build  a  dormitory  for 
Harvard  College  ?  I  'm  not  rich  enough  to  do  either 
in  an  ideally  handsome  way,  and  I  confess  that  yet 
a  while  I  feel  too  young  to  strike  my  grand  coup. 
I  'm  holding  myself  ready  for  inspiration.  I  'm 
waiting  till  something  takes  my  fancy  irresistibly.  If 
inspiration  comes  at  forty  it  will  be  a  hundred  pities 
to  have  tied  up  my  money-bag  at  thirty." 

"Well,  of  course  I  give  you  decent  time,"  said 

4 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Cecilia.  "It  's  only  a  word  to  the  wise  —  a  notifica 
tion  that  you  're  expected  not  to  run  your  course 
without  having  done  something  handsome  for  your 
fellow  men." 

Nine  o'clock  sounded,  and  Bessie  with  each  stroke 
courted  a  closer  embrace.  But  a  single  winged  word 
from  her  mother  overleaped  her  successive  intrench- 
ments.  She  turned  and  kissed  her  cousin,  deposit 
ing  an  irrepressible  tear  on  his  moustache.  Then 
she  went  and  said  her  prayers  to  her  mother;  it 
was  evident  she  was  being  admirably  brought  up. 
Rowland,  with  the  permission  of  his  hostess,  lighted 
a  cigar  and  puffed  it  a  while  in  silence.  Cecilia's 
interest  in  his  career  seemed  very  agreeable.  That 
Mallet  was  without  vanity  I  by  no  means  intend  to 
affirm;  but  there  had  been  times  when,  seeing  him 
accept  with  scarce  less  deference  advice  even  more 
peremptory  than  this  lady's,  you  might  have  asked 
yourself  what  had  become  of  his  proper  pride.  Now, 
in  the  sweet-smelling  starlight,  he  felt  gently  wooed 
to  egotism.  There  was  a  project  connected  with  his 
going  abroad  which  it  was  on  his  tongue's  end  to 
communicate.  It  had  no  relation  to  hospitals  or 
dormitories,  and  yet  it  would  have  sounded  very  gen 
erous.  But  it  was  not  because  it  would  have  sounded 
generous  that  poor  Mallet  at  last  puffed  it  away 
in  the  fumes  of  his  cigar.  Useful  though  it  might 
be,  it  expressed  too  imperfectly  the  young  man's  own 
personal  conception  of  usefulness.  He  was  extremely 
fond  of  all  the  arts  and  had  an  almost  passionate 
enjoyment  of  pictures.  He  had  seen  a  great  many 
and  judged  them  sagaciously.  It  had  occurred  to 

5 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

him  some  time  before  that  it  would  be  the  work  of 
a  good  citizen  to  go  abroad  and  with  all  expedition 
and  secrecy  purchase  certain  valuable  specimens 
of  the  Dutch  and  Italian  schools,  as  to  which  he 
had  received  private  proposals,  and  then  present 
his  treasures  out  of  hand  to  an  American  city,  not 
unknown  to  aesthetic  fame,  in  which  at  that  time 
there  prevailed  a  good  deal  of  fruitless  aspiration 
toward  an  art-museum.  He  had  seen  himself  in 
imagination,  more  than  once,  in  the  mouldy  old 
saloon  of  a  Florentine  palace,  turning  toward  the 
deep  embrasure  of  the  window  some  scarcely-faded 
Ghirlandaio  or  Botticelli  while  a  host  in  reduced 
circumstances  pointed  out  the  lovely  drawing  of  a 
hand.  But  he  imparted  none  of  these  visions  to 
Cecilia,  and  he  suddenly  swept  them  away  with  the 
declaration  that  he  was  of  course  an  idle  useless 
creature  and  that  he  should  probably  be  even  more 
so  in  Europe  than  at  home.  "The  only  thing  is," 
he  said,  "that  there  I  shall  seem  to  be  doing  some 
thing.  I  shall  be  better  beguiled,  and  shall  be  there 
fore,  I  suppose,  in  a  better  humour  with  life.  You 
may  say  that  that 's  just  the  humour  a  useless  man 
should  keep  out  of.  He  should  cultivate  humility 
and  depression.  I  did  a  good  many  things  when  I  was 
in  Europe  before,  but  I  spent  no  winter  in  Rome. 
Every  one  assures  me  that  this  is  a  peculiar  refine 
ment  of  bliss;  you  must  have  noticed  the  almost 
priggish  ecstasy  with  which  those  who  have  enjoyed 
it  talk  about  it.  It's  evidently  a  sort  of  glorified  loafing: 
a  passive  life  there,  thanks  to  the  number  and  the 
quality  of  one's  impressions,  takes  on  a  respectable 

6 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

likeness  to  an  active  pursuit.  It's  always  lotus-eat 
ing,  only  you  sit  down  at  table  and  the  lotuses  are 
served  up  on  rococo  china.  It 's  all  very  well,  but 
I  have  a  distinct  prevision  of  this  —  that  if  Roman 
life  does  n't  do  something  substantial  to  make  you 
happier  it  must  contribute  rather  to  unhinge  or 
upset  you.  It  seems  to  me  a  rash  thing  for  a  sensi 
tive  soul  deliberately  to  cultivate  its  sensibilities  by 
rambling  too  often  among  the  ruins  of  the  Palatine 
or  riding  too  often  in  the  shadow  of  the  crumbling 
aqueducts.  In  such  recreations  the  chords  of  feeling 
grow  tense,  and  after-life,  to  spare  your  aesthetic 
nerves,  must  play  upon  them  with  a  touch  as  dainty 
as  the  tread  of  Mignon  when  she  danced  her  egg- 
dance." 

"I  should  have  said,  my  dear  Rowland,  with  all 
recognition  of  your  eloquence,"  Cecilia  said  with  a 
laugh,  "that  your  nerves  were  tough  —  that  your 
eggs  were  hard!" 

"That  being  stupid,  you  mean,  I  might  be  happy  ? 
Upon  my  word,  I'm  not  so  happy  as  that!  I'm  clever 
enough  to  want  more  than  I've  got.  I'm  tired  of 
myself,  my  own  thoughts,  my  own  affairs,  my  own 
eternal  company.  True  happiness,  we  are  told, 
consists  in  getting  out  of  one's  self;  but  the  point 
is  not  only  to  get  out  —  you  must  stay  out;  and  to 
stay  out  you  must  have  some  absorbing  errand. 
Unfortunately  I  have  no  errand,  and  nobody  will 
trust  me  with  one.  I  want  to  care  for  something  or 
for  somebody.  And  I  want  to  care,  don't  you  see  ? 
with  a  certain  intensity;  even,  if  you  can  believe  it, 
with  a  certain  passion.  I  can't  just  now  be  intense 

7 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  passionate  about  a  hospital  or  a  dormitory.  Do 
you  know  I  sometimes  think  that  I  'm  a  man  of 
genius  half-finished  ?  The  genius  has  been  left  out, 
the  faculty  of  expression  is  wanting;  but  the  need  for 
expression  remains,  and  I  spend  my  days  groping 
for  the  latch  of  a  closed  door." 

"What  an  immense  number  of  words,"  said  Cecilia 
after  a  pause,  "  to  say  you  want  to  fall  in  love !  I  've 
no  doubt  you  've  as  good  a  genius  for  that  as  any 
one  if  you  would  only  trust  it  a  little  more." 

"  Of  course  I  've  thought  of  that,  and  I  assure  you 
I  hold  myself  ready.  But  evidently  I  'm  not  inflam 
mable.  Is  there  in  Northampton  by  chance  some 
perfect  epitome  of  the  graces  ?" 

"Of  the  graces?"  said  Cecilia,  raising  her  eye 
brows  and  suppressing  too  distinct  a  consciousness 
of  being  herself  a  finished  embodiment  of  several. 
"The  household  virtues,  in  all  their  rigour,  are 
better  represented.  There  are  some  excellent  young 
women,  and  there  are  two  or  three  very  pretty  girls. 
I'll  have  them  all  here  to  tea,  one  by  one,  if  you  like." 

"  I  should  particularly  like  it ;  especially  as  I 
should  give  you  a  chance  to  see  by  the  profundity 
of  my  attention  that  if  I  'm  not  happy  it 's  not  for 
want  of  taking  pains." 

Cecilia  was  silent  a  little;  and  then,  "On  the 
whole,"  she  resumed,  "I  don't  think  there  are  any 
worth  putting  you  in  possible  suspense  about.  You've 
seen  as  good  samples  as  we  can  show  you." 

"Are  you  very,  very  sure  ?"  asked  the  young  man, 
rising  and  throwing  away  his  cigar-end. 

"Upon  my  word."  cried  Cecilia,  "one  would 

8 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

suppose  I  wished  to  keep  you  for  myself  !  Of  course 
I  'm  very,  very  sure.  But,  as  the  penalty  of  your 
insinuations,  I  shall  invite  the  plainest  and  prosiest 
damsel  who  can  be  found  —  of  them  we  have  our 
assortment!  —  and  leave  you  alone  with  her." 

Rowland  smiled.  "Even  against  her,"  he  said, 
"I  should  be  sorry  to  conclude  until  I  had  given  her 
my  respectful  attention." 

This  little  profession  of  ideal  chivalry  (which 
closed  the  conversation)  was  not  quite  so  fanciful 
on  his  lips  as  it  would  have  been  on  those  of  many 
another  man;  as  a  rapid  glance  at  his  antecedents  may 
help  to  make  the  reader  perceive.  His  life  had  held 
side  by  side  many  hard  things  and  many  soft.  He 
had  sprung  from  a  stiff  Puritan  stock  and  had  been 
brought  up  to  think  much  more  intently  of  the  duties 
of  our  earthly  pilgrimage  than  of  its  privileges  and 
pleasures.  His  progenitors  had  submitted  in  the  matter 
of  dogmatic  theology  to  the  relaxing  influences  of 
recent  years;  but  if  Rowland's  youthful  conscious 
ness  was  not  chilled  by  the  menace  of  long  punish 
ment  for  brief  transgression,  he  had  at  least  been 
made  to  feel  that  there  ran  through  all  things  a  strain 
of  right  and  of  wrong  as  different,  after  all,  in  their 
complexion,  as  the  texture,  to  the  spiritual  sense, 
of  Sundays  and  week-days.  His  father,  a  chip  of 
the  primal  Puritan  block,  had  been  a  man  of  an  icy 
smile  and  a  stony  frown.  He  had  always  bestowed 
on  his  son,  on  principle,  more  frowns  than  smiles, 
and  if  the  lad  had  not  been  turned  to  stone  himself 
it  was  because  nature  had  blessed  him  inwardly 
with  a  well  of  vivifying  waters.  Mrs.  Mallet  had 

9 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

been  a  Miss  Rowland,  the  daughter  of  a  retired  sea- 
captain  once  famous  on  the  ships  that  sailed  from 
Salem  and  Newburyport.  He  had  brought  to  port 
many  a  cargo  which  crowned  the  edifice  of  fortunes 
already  almost  colossal,  but  he  had  also  done  a  little 
sagacious  trading  on  his  own  account,  and  he  was 
able  to  retire,  prematurely  for  so  seaworthy  a  mari 
time  organism,  upon  a  pension  of  his  own  providing. 
He  was  to  be  seen  for  a  year  on  the  Salem  wharves, 
smoking  the  best  tobacco  and  contemplating  the 
seaward  horizon  with  an  inveteracy  which  super 
ficial  minds  interpreted  as  a  sign  of  repentance.  At 
last,  one  evening,  he  disappeared  beneath  it,  as  he 
had  often  done  before;  this  time,  however,  not  as 
a  commissioned  navigator,  but  simply  as  an  ama 
teur  of  a  critical  turn  likely  to  prove  oppressive  to 
the  officer  in  command  of  the  vessel.  Five  months 
later  his  place  at  home  knew  him  again,  and  made 
the  acquaintance  also  of  a  handsome,  light-coloured 
young  woman,  of  redundant  contour,  speaking  a 
foreign  tongue.  The  foreign  tongue  proved  after 
much  conflicting  research  to  be  the  idiom  of  Am 
sterdam,  and  the  young  woman,  which  was  stranger 
still,  to  be  Captain  Rowland's  wife.  Why  he  had 
gone  forth  so  suddenly  across  the  seas  to  marry 
her,  what  had  happened  between  them  before,  and 
whether  —  though  it  was  of  questionable  propriety 
for  a  good  citizen  to  espouse  a  young  person  of 
mysterious  origin  who  did  her  hair  in  fantastically 
elaborate  plaits  and  in  whose  appearance  "figure" 
enjoyed  such  striking  predominance  —  he  would  not 
have  had  a  heavy  weight  on  his  conscience  if  he  had 

10 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

remained  an  irresponsible  bachelor:  these  questions, 
and  many  others  bearing  with  varying  degrees  of 
immediacy  on  the  subject,  were  much  propounded 
but  scantily  answered,  and  this  history  need  not  be 
charged  with  resolving  them.  Mrs.  Rowland,  for 
so  handsome  a  woman,  proved  a  tranquil  neighbour 
and  an  excellent  housewife.  Her  extremely  fresh 
complexion,  however,  was  always  suffused  with  an 
air  of  apathetic  homesickness,  and  she  played  her 
part  in  American  society  chiefly  by  having  the  little 
squares  of  brick  pavement  in  front  of  her  dwelling 
scoured  and  polished  as  nearly  as  possible  into  the 
likeness  of  Dutch  tiles.  Rowland  Mallet  remembered 
having  seen  her  as  a  child  —  an  immensely  stout 
white-faced  lady,  wearing  a  high  cap  of  very  stiff 
tulle,  speaking  English  with  a  formidable  accent 
and  suffering  from  dropsy.  Captain  Rowland  was 
a  little  bronzed  and  wizened  man,  with  eccentric 
opinions.  He  advocated  the  creation  of  a  public 
promenade  along  the  sea,  with  arbours  and  little 
green  tables  for  the  consumption  of  beer,  and  a 
platform,  surrounded  by  Chinese  lanterns,  for  dancing. 
He  especially  desired  the  town  library  to  be  opened 
on  Sundays;  though,  as  he  never  entered  it  on  week 
days,  it  was  easy  to  turn  the  proposition  into  ridicule. 
Therefore  if  Mrs.  Mallet  was  a  woman  of  an  ex 
quisite  moral  tone  it  was  not  that  she  had  inherited 
her  temper  from  forefathers  with  a  turn  for  casuistry. 
Jonas  Mallet  at  the  time  of  his  marriage  was  con 
ducting  with  silent  shrewdness  a  small  unpromising 
business.  Both  his  shrewdness  and  his  silence  in 
creased  with  his  years,  and  at  the  close  of  his  life 

II 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  was  an  extremely  well-dressed,  well-brushed 
gentleman  with  a  frigid  grey  eye,  who  said  little  to 
anybody,  but  of  whom  everybody  said  that  he  had 
a  very  handsome  fortune.  He  was  not  a  sentimental 
father,  and  the  introduction  into  Rowland's  life  of 
that  grim  ghost  of  the  wholesome  by  which  I  spoke 
of  it  just  now  as  haunted  dated  from  early  boyhood. 
Mr.  Mallet,  whenever  he  looked  at  his  son,  felt 
extreme  compunction  at  having  made  a  fortune. 
He  remembered  that  the  fruit  had  not  dropped 
ripe  from  the  tree  into  his  own  mouth,  and  he  deter 
mined  it  should  be  no  fault  of  his  if  the  boy  were 
corrupted  by  luxury.  Rowland  therefore,  except 
for  a  good  deal  of  expensive  instruction  in  foreign 
tongues  and  abstruse  sciences,  received  the  educa 
tion  of  a  poor  man's  son.  His  fare  was  plain,  his 
temper  familiar  with  the  discipline  of  patched  trousers 
and  his  habits  marked  by  an  exaggerated  simplicity 
which  was  kept  up  really  at  great  expense.  He  was 
banished  to  the  country  for  months  together,  in  the 
midst  of  servants  who  had  strict  injunctions  to  see 
that  he  suffered  no  serious  harm,  but  were  as  strictly 
forbidden  to  wait  upon  him.  As  no  school  could  be 
found  conducted  on  principles  sufficiently  rigorous, 
he  was  attended  at  home  by  an  instructor  who  had 
set  a  high  price  —  high  for  Jonas  Mallet  —  on  the 
understanding  that  he  was  to  illustrate  the  beauty 
of  abstinence  not  only  by  precept  but  by  example. 
Rowland  passed  for  a  child  of  ordinary  parts,  and 
certainly,  during  his  younger  years,  was  an  excellent 
imitation  of  the  boy  —  most  usual  of  boys  —  who 
has  inherited  nothing  whatever  that  is  to  make  his 

12 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

presence  on  earth  shine  from  afar.  He  was  passive, 
pliable,  frank,  extremely  slow  at  his  books  and  in 
ordinately  fond  of  trout-fishing.  His  hair,  a  memento 
of  his  Dutch  ancestry,  was  of  the  fairest  shade  of 
yellow,  his  complexion  absurdly  rosy  and  the  meas 
urement  of  his  middle,  when  he  was  about  ten  years 
old,  quite  alarmingly  large.  This,  however,  was 
but  an  episode  in  his  growth;  he  became  afterwards 
a  fresh-coloured,  yellow-bearded  man,  but  was  never 
accused  of  anything  more  material  than  a  manly 
stoutness.  He  emerged  from  childhood  a  simple, 
wholesome,  round-eyed  lad,  with  no  suspicion  that 
a  less  circuitous  course  might  have  been  taken  to 
make  him  happy,  but  with  a  vague  sense  that  his 
young  experience  was  not  a  fair  sample  of  human 
freedom  and  that  he  was  to  make  a  great  many 
discoveries.  When  he  was  about  fifteen  he  achieved 
a  momentous  one.  He  ascertained  that  his  mother 
was  a  saint.  She  had  always  been  a  very  vivid  pre 
sence  in  his  life,  but  of  an  intensity  so  mild,  so  dif 
fused  and  so  regulated  that  his  sense  was  fully  opened 
to  it  only  by  the  danger  of  losing  her.  She  had  an 
illness  which  for  many  months  was  liable  at  any 
moment  to  carry  her  off,  and  during  her  long- 
arrested  convalescence  she  removed  the  mask  that  she 
had  worn  for  years  by  her  husband's  order.  Row 
land  spent  his  days  at  her  side,  and  felt  before  long 
as  if  he  had  made  a  new  friend.  All  his  impressions 
of  this  period  were  to  be  commented  upon  and  in 
terpreted  during  the  comparative  ease  of  the  future, 
and  it  was  only  at  the  later  time  that  he  understood 
how  his  mother  had  been  for  fifteen  long  years  a 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

woman  heavily  depressed,  and  her  marriage  an 
irredeemable  error  which  she  had  spent  her  life  in 
trying  to  look  in  the  face.  She  had  found  nothing 
to  oppose  to  her  husband's  rigid  and  consistent  will 
but  the  appearance  of  absolute  compliance;  her 
courage  had  sunk,  and  she  had  lived  for  a  while 
in  a  sort  of  spiritual  torpor.  But  at  last,  as  her  child 
emerged  from  babyhood,  she  had  begun  to  find  a 
certain  charm  in  patience,  to  discover  the  uses  of 
ingenuity,  and  to  learn  that  somehow  or  other  one 
can  always  arrange  one's  life.  She  had  cultivated 
from  this  time  forward  a  little  plot  of  independ 
ent  feeling,  and  it  was  of  this  private  precinct  that 
before  her  death  she  had  given  her  son  the  key. 
Rowland's  allowance  at  college  was  barely  sufficient 
to  maintain  him  decently,  and,  his  degree  neverthe 
less  achieved,  he  was  taken  into  his  father's  counting- 
house  to  do  small  drudgery  on  a  proportionate 
stipend.  For  three  years  he  earned  his  living  as 
regularly  as  the  obscure  functionary  in  fustian  who 
swept  out  the  place.  Mr.  Mallet  was  consistent, 
but  the  perfection  of  his  consistency  was  known  only 
on  his  death.  He  left  but  a  third  of  his  property  to 
his  son,  devoting  the  remainder  to  various  public 
institutions  and  local  charities.  Rowland's  third 
was  a  very  easy  competence,  and  he  never  felt  a 
moment's  jealousy  of  his  fellow  pensioners;  but 
when  one  of  the  establishments  which  had  figured 
most  advantageously  in  his  father's  will  bethought 
itself  to  affirm  the  existence  of  a  later  instrument  in 
which  it  had  been  still  more  handsomely  treated,  the 
young  man  felt  a  sudden  passionate  need  to  repel  the 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

claim  by  process  of  law.  There  was  a  sharp  contest, 
but  he  gained  his  case;  immediately  after  which  he 
made  in  another  quarter  a  donation  of  the  disputed 
sum.  He  cared  nothing  for  the  money,  but  he  had  felt 
a  just  desire  to  protest  against  a  star  which  seemed 
determined  only  not  to  pamper  him.  It  struck  him 
that  he  could  put  up  with  a  little  pampering.  And 
yet  he  treated  himself  to  a  very  modest  quantity 
and  submitted  without  reserve  to  the  great  national 
discipline  which  began  in  1861.  When  the  Civil 
War  broke  out  he  immediately  obtained  a  commission, 
doing  his  duty  afterwards,  for  the  three  first  long 
years,  by  the  aid  of  much  grinding  of  the  teeth. 
His  duty  happened  to  remain,  for  the  most  part, 
obscure,  but  he  never  lost  a  certain  private  satis 
faction  in  remembering  that  on  two  or  three  occa 
sions  it  had  been  performed,  if  not  with  glory,  at 
least  with  a  noted  propriety.  He  had  disentangled 
himself  from  business,  and  after  the  war  he  felt  a 
deep  disinclination  to  take  up  again  the  harsh  and 
broken  threads.  He  had  no  desire  to  make  money, 
he  had  money  enough;  and  although  he  knew,  and 
was  frequently  reminded,  that  a  young  man  is  the 
better  for  a  fixed  occupation,  he  could  perceive  no 
advantage  to  his  soul  in  his  driving  a  lucrative  trade. 
Yet  few  young  men  of  means  and  leisure  ever  made 
less  of  a  parade  of  idleness,  and  indeed  idleness  in  any 
degree  could  hardly  be  laid  at  the  door  of  a  person 
age  who  took  life  in  the  conscious,  serious,  anxious 
fashion  of  our  friend.  It  often  seemed  to  Mallet  that 
he  wholly  lacked  the  prime  requisite  of  an  expert 
flaneur  —  the  simple,  sensuous,  confident  relish  of 

15 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

pleasure.  He  had  frequent  fits  of  melancholy  in 
which  he  declared  that  he  was  neither  fish  nor  flesh 
nor  good  red  herring.  His  was  neither  an  irre 
sponsibly  contemplative  nature  nor  a  sturdily  prac 
tical  one,  and  he  was  for  ever  looking  in  vain  for  the 
uses  of  the  things  that  please  and  the  charm  of 
the  things  that  sustain.  He  was  an  awkward  mix 
ture  of  moral  and  aesthetic  curiosity,  and  yet  he  would 
have  made  an  ineffective  reformer  and  an  indifferent 
artist.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  glow  of  happiness 
must  be  found  either  in  action  of  some  thoroughly 
keen  kind  on  behalf  of  an  idea,  or  in  producing  a 
masterpiece  in  one  of  the  arts.  Oftenest,  perhaps, 
he  wished  he  had  been  a  vigorous  young  man  of 
genius  without  a  penny.  As  it  was,  he  could  only 
buy  pictures  and  not  paint  them;  and  in  the  way  of 
action  he  had  to  content  himself  with  making  a  rule 
to  render  scrupulous  justice  to  fine  strokes  of  it  in 
others.  On  the  whole  he  had  an  incorruptible  modesty. 
With  his  blooming  complexion  and  his  quiet  grey 
eyes  he  felt  the  friction  of  existence  more  than  was 
suspected;  but  he  asked  no  allowance  on  grounds 
of  temper,  he  assumed  that  fate  had  treated  him 
inordinately  well  and  that  he  had  no  excuse  for 
taking  an  ill-natured  view  of  life,  and  he  engaged 
to  believe  that  all  women  were  fair,  all  men  were 
brave  and  the  world  a  delightful  place  of  sojourn, 
until  the  contrary  should  be  distinctly  proved. 

Cecilia's  blooming  garden  and  shady  porch  had 
seemed  so  friendly  to  repose  and  a  cigar  that  she 
reproached  him  the  next  morning  with  indifference 
to  her  ordered  little  parlour,  not  less  in  its  way  a 

16 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

monument  to  her  ingenious  taste.  "And  by  the  way," 
she  added  as  he  followed  her  in,  "if  I  refused  last 
night  to  show  you  a  pretty  girl,  I  can  at  least  show 
you  a  remarkably  pretty  boy." 

She  threw  open  a  window  and  pointed  to  a  statu 
ette  which  occupied  a  place  of  honour  among  the 
ornaments  of  the  room.  Rowland  looked  at  it  a  mo 
ment  and  then  turned  to  her  with  an  exclamation 
of  surprise.  She  gave  him  a  rapid  glance,  perceived 
that  her  statuette  was  of  striking  interest,  and  then 
smiled  knowingly,  as  if  this  were  a  familiar  idea. 
"Who  in  the  world  did  it,  and  how  did  you  ever 
come  by  it  ?"  Rowland  had  visibly  received  a  sharp 
impression. 

"Oh,"  said  Cecilia,  adjusting  the  light,  "it's  a 
little  thing  of  poor  Mr.  Hudson's." 

"And  who  the  deuce  is  poor  Mr.  Hudson  ?"  asked 
Rowland.  But  he  was  absorbed;  he  lost  her  immediate 
reply.  The  statuette,  in  bronze,  something  more 
than  two  feet  high,  represented  a  naked  youth  drink 
ing  from  a  gourd.  The  attitude  was  perfectly  simple. 
The  lad  was  squarely  planted  on  his  feet,  with  his 
legs  a  little  apart;  his  back  was  slightly  hollowed, 
his  head  thrown  back;  his  hands  were  raised  to 
support  the  rustic  cup.  There  was  a  loosened  fillet 
of  wild  flowers  about  his  head,  and  his  eyes,  under 
their  dropped  lids,  looked  straight  into  the  cup.  On 
the  base  was  scratched  the  Greek  word  A«//ct,  Thirst. 
The  figure  might  have  been  some  beautiful  youth 
of  ancient  fable  —  Hylas  or  Narcissus,  Paris  or 
Endymion.  Its  beauty  was  the  beauty  of  natural 
movement;  nothing  had  been  sought  to  be  repre- 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sented  but  the  perfection  of  an  attitude.  This  had  been 
attentively  studied  —  it  was  rendered  with  charming 
truth.  Rowland  demanded  more  light,  dropped  his 
head  on  this  side  and  that,  uttered  vague  exclam 
ations.  He  said  to  himself,  as  he  had  said  more  than 
once  in  the  Louvre  and  the  Vatican,  "We  ugly 
mortals,  what  beautiful  creatures  we  are!"  Nothing 
for  a  long  time  had  given  him  so  much  pleasure. 
"Hudson  —  Hudson,"  he  asked  again;  "who  may 
Hudson  be  ?" 

"A  young  man  of  this  very  place,"  said  Cecilia. 

"A  young  man?  How  young?" 

"  I  suppose  he  's  three  or  four  and  twenty." 

"  Of  this  very  place,  you  say  —  of  Northampton, 
Massachusetts  ?" 

"He  lives  here,  but  his  people  belong  to  Virginia." 

"Is  he  a  sculptor  then  by  profession  ?" 

"Oh,  no  —  he  's  studying  Law." 

Rowland  burst  out  laughing.  "He  has  found 
something  in  Blackstone  that  I  never  did.  He  makes 
statues  like  this  then  simply  for  his  pleasure  ?" 

Cecilia,  with  a  smile,  gave  a  little  toss  of  her  head. 
"He  makes  them  perhaps  sometimes  for  mine!" 

"I  congratulate  you,"  said  Rowland,  "on  having 
so  generous  a  provider.  I  wonder  if  he  could  be 
induced  to  do  anything  for  a  mere  man." 

"  For  you  ?  Oh,  this  was  a  matter  of  friendship. 
I  saw  the  figure  when  he  had  modelled  it  in  clay, 
and  of  course  I  greatly  admired  it.  He  said  nothing 
at  the  time,  but  a  week  ago,  on  my  birthday,  he 
arrived  in  a  buggy,  with  his  treasure  done  up  in 
a  morsel  of  old  blanket.  He  had  had  it  cast  at  the 

18 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

foundry  at  Chicopee;  I  believe  it 's  a  beautiful 
piece  of  bronze.  He  begged  me,  in  the  most  natural 
way  in  the  world,  to  accept." 

"He  has,  upon  my  word,  a  grand  conception  of 
the  natural!"  With  which  Rowland  fell  to  admiring 
the  statue  again. 

" Really  then,"  said  Cecilia,  "it  's  a  very  remark 
able  thing  ?" 

"Why,    my    dear    cousin,"    Rowland    answered, 
"Mr.  Hudson  of  Virginia  is  an  extraordinary — ' 
Then   suddenly  stopping,  "Is  he  a  great   friend  of 
yours  ?"  he  asked. 

"A  great  friend?"  Cecilia  hesitated.  "I  regard 
him  practically  as  a  child." 

"Well,"  said  Rowland,  "he's  a  very  precocious 
child!  Tell  me  something  about  him.  I  should  like 
to  see  him." 

Cecilia  was  obliged  to  go  to  her  daughter's  music- 
lesson,  but  she  assured  Rowland  that  she  would  arrange 
for  him  a  meeting  with  the  young  sculptor.  He  was 
a  frequent  visitor,  and  as  he  had  not  called  for  some 
days  it  was  quite  possible  he  would  come  that  evening. 
Rowland,  left  alone,  examined  the  statuette  at  his 
leisure,  and  returned  more  than  once  during  the  day 
to  take  another  look  at  it.  He  discovered  its  weak 
points,  but  its  charm  was  of  finest  essence.  It  had 
taken  form  under  the  breath  of  genius.  Rowland 
envied  the  happy  youth  who,  in  a  New  England 
village,  without  aid  or  encouragement,  without  models 
or  examples,  had  found  it  so  easy  to  produce  a  lovely 
work. 


II 


IN  the  evening,  as  he  was  smoking  his  cigar  on  the 
verandah,  a  light  quick  step  pressed  the  gravel  of  the 
garden-path,  and  in  a  moment  a  young  man,  rising 
before  them,  had  made  his  bow  to  Cecilia.  It  indi 
cated  either  that  he  was  an  extreme  intimate  or  was 
scantly  versed  in  the  common  social  forms.  Cecilia, 
who  was  sitting  near  the  steps,  pointed  to  a  neigh 
bouring  chair,  but  her  visitor  abruptly  sought  a 
place  on  a  step  at  her  feet  and  began  to  fan  him 
self  vigorously  with  his  hat,  breaking  out  into  loud 
dispraise  of  the  high  temperature.  "I  'm  simply 
dripping  wet!"  he  observed  without  ceremony. 

"You  walk  too  fast,"  said  Cecilia.  "You  do  every 
thing  too  fast." 

"I  know  it,  I  know  it!"  he  cried,  passing  his  hand 
through  his  abundant  dark  hair  and  making  it  stand 
out  in  a  picturesque  shock.  "I  can't  dawdle  over 
things  if  I  try.  If  I  do  anything  at  all  I  must  do  it  so. 
There  's  something  inside  of  me  that  drives  me.  A 
demon  of  unrest!" 

Cecilia  gave  a  light  laugh,  and  Rowland  leaned 
forward  in  his  hammock.  He  had  placed  himself 
in  it  at  Bessie's  request  and  was  playing  that  he 
was  her  baby  and  that  she  was  rocking  him  to  sleep. 
She  sat  beside  him  swinging  the  hammock  to  and 
fro  and  chanting  a  lullaby.  When  he  raised  himself 
she  pushed  him  back  and  said  that  the  baby  must 

20 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

finish  its  nap.  "  But  I  want  to  see  the  gentleman  with 
the  driving  demon,"  said  Rowland. 

"Do  demons  know  how  to  drive?"  Bessie  de 
manded.  "It  's  only  old  Mr.  Hudson." 

"Very  well,  I  want  to  see  old  Mr.  Hudson." 

"Oh,  never  mind  him!"  said  Bessie,  with  the 
brevity  of  contempt. 

"You  speak  as  if  you  didn't  like  him." 

"I  don't!"  Bessie  affirmed,  putting  Rowland  to  bed 
again. 

The  hammock  was  swung  at  the  end  of  the  veran 
dah,  in  the  thickest  shade  of  the  climbing  plants, 
and  this  fragment  of  dialogue  had  passed  unnoticed. 
Rowland  submitted  a  while  longer  to  be  cradled  and 
contented  himself  with  listening  to  Mr.  Hudson's 
voice.  It  was  a  soft  and  not  altogether  masculine 
organ,  and  pitched  on  this  occasion  in  a  somewhat 
plaintive  and  pettish  key.  The  young  man's  mood 
seemed  fretful ;  he  complained  of  the  gnats,  of  the 
dust,  of  a  shoe  that  hurt  him,  of  having  gone  on  an 
errand  a  mile  to  the  other  side  of  the  town  and  found 
that  the  person  he  was  in  search  of  had  left  North 
ampton  an  hour  before. 

"Won't  you  have  a  cup  of  tea  ?"  Cecilia  asked. 
"Perhaps  that  will  restore  your  equanimity." 

"Ay,  by  keeping  me  awake  all  night!"  said  Mr. 
Hudson.  "At  the  best,  to  go  down  to  the  office  is 
like  getting  into  a  bath  with  the  water  frozen.  With 
my  nerves  set  on  edge  by  a  sleepless  night  I  should 
sit  and  shiver  at  home.  That  's  always  charming 
for  my  mother." 

"Your  mother's  well,  I  hope?" 

21 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  mother  's  as  usual." 

"And  Miss  Garland?" 

"Miss  Garland's  as  usual  too.  Every  one,  every 
thing  's  as  usual.  Nothing  ever  happens  in  this  be 
nighted  town." 

"I  beg  your  pardon;  things  do  happen  some 
times,"  said  Cecilia.  "Here  's  a  dear  cousin  of  mine 
arrived  on  purpose  to  sing  to  you  the  praises  of  your 
little  bronze."  And  she  called  to  Rowland  to  come 
and  be  introduced  to  Mr.  Hudson.  The  young  man 
sprang  up  with  alacrity,  and  Rowland,  coming  for 
ward  to  shake  hands,  had  a  good  look  at  him  in  the 
light  projected  from  the  parlour  window.  Something 
seemed  to  shine  out  of  Hudson's  face  as  a  warning 
against  random  compliments. 

"Your  statuette  seems  to  me  very  interesting," 
Rowland  gravely  said.  "It  has  given  me  immense 
pleasure." 

"And  my  cousin  really  knows  what  things  are 
worth,"  Cecilia  went  on.  "My  cousin  's  a  judge  and 
a  critic." 

Hudson  smiled  and  stared.  "A  judge  —  a  critic  ?" 
he  echoed,  laughing.  "He  's  the  first  then  I  've  ever 
seen!  Let  me  see  what  they  look  like;"  and  he  drew 
Rowland  nearer  to  the  light.  "Have  they  all  such 
good  heads  as  that  ?  I  should  like  to  model  yours." 

"Oh  do  it! "  said  Cecilia.  "It  will  keep  him  with 
us  a  while.  He  's  running  off  otherwise  to  Europe." 

"Ah,  off  to  Europe!"  Hudson  exclaimed  with  a 
melancholy  cadence  as  they  sat  down.  "Happy, 
happy  man!" 

But  the  note  seemed  to  Rowland  struck  rather  at 

22 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

random,  for  he  failed  to  catch  it  again  in  the  boyish 
candour  of  the  visitor's  talk.  Hudson  was  a  tall 
slim  youth,  with  a  singularly  mobile  and  intelligent 
face.  Rowland  was  struck  at  first  only  with  its 
responsive  vivacity,  but  it  had  presently  affected 
him  as  full  of  a  beauty  of  its  own.  The  features  were 
admirably  chiselled  and  finished,  and  a  frank  smile 
played  over  them  as  gracefully  as  a  breeze  among 
flowers.  The  fault  of  the  young  man's  whole  struc 
ture  was  an  excessive  want  of  breadth.  The  fore 
head,  though  high  and  brave,  was  narrow;  the  jaw 
and  the  shoulders  were  narrow,  and  the  result  was 
an  air  of  insufficient  physical  substance.  But  Mallet 
afterwards  learned  that  this  fair  and  slender  strip 
ling  could  draw  upon  a  fund  of  nervous  force  out 
lasting  and  outwearying  the  endurance  of  sturdier 
temperaments.  And  certainly  there  was  life  enough 
in  his  eye  to  furnish  an  immortality.  It  was  a  gener 
ous  dark  grey  eye,  subject  to  an  intermittent  kind 
ling  glow  which  would  have  made  a  ruder  visage 
striking,  and  which  gave  at  times  to  Hudson's 
harmonious  face  an  altogether  extraordinary  beauty. 
There  was  to  Rowland's  sympathetic  sense  a  slightly 
pitiful  disparity  between  the  young  sculptor's  dis 
tinguished  mask  and  the  shabby  gentility  of  his 
costume.  Arrayed  for  a  rural  visit,  a  visit  to  a  pretty 
woman,  he  was  clad  from  head  to  foot  in  a  white 
linen  suit  which  had  never  been  remarkable  for 
the  felicity  of  its  cut  and  which  had  now  quite  lost 
its  vivifying  and  redeeming  crispness.  He  wore  a 
bright  red  cravat,  passed  through  a  ring  altogether 
too  splendid  to  be  valuable;  he  pulled  and  twisted, 

23 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

as  he  sat,  a  pair  of  yellow  kid  gloves;  he  emphasised 
his  conversation  with  great  dashes  and  flourishes 
of  a  silver-tipped  walking-stick,  and  he  kept  con 
stantly  taking  ofF  and  putting  on  one  of  those  slouched 
sombreros  which  are  the  traditional  property  of 
the  Virginian  or  Carolinian  of  romance.  When  his 
hat  was  on  he  was  almost  romantic,  in  spite  of  his 
mock  elegance;  and  when  it  was  ofF  and  he  sat 
nursing  it  and  turning  it  about  and  not  knowing 
what  to  do  with  it,  he  could  hardly  be  said  to  be 
awkward.  He  evidently  had  a  native  relish  for  rich 
accessories,  and  he  appropriated  what  came  to  his 
hand.  This  was  visible  in  his  talk,  which  abounded 
in  the  superlative  and  the  sweeping.  His  plastic 
sense  took  in  conversation  altogether  the  turn  of 
colour. 

Rowland,  who  was  a  temperate  talker,  sat  by  in 
silence,  while  Cecilia,  who  had  told  him  that  she 
desired  his  opinion  upon  her  friend,  used  a  good 
deal  of  characteristic  art  in  leading  the  young  man 
on  to  put  himself  before  them.  She  perfectly  suc 
ceeded,  and  Hudson  rattled  away  for  an  hour  with 
a  volubility  in  which  the  innocence  of  youth  and  the 
assurance  of  felt  and  unwonted  success  were  sin 
gularly  blended.  He  gave  his  opinion  on  twenty 
topics,  he  opened  up  the  crystal  flood  of  local  gossip, 
he  described  his  repulsive  routine  at  the  office  of 
Messrs.  Striker  and  Spooner,  counsellors-at-law, 
and  he  gave  with  a  hundred  happy  touches  an 
account  of  the  annual  boat-race  between  Harvard 
and  Yale,  which  he  had  lately  admired  at  Wor 
cester.  He  had  looked  at  the  straining  oarsmen 

24 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  the  swaying  crowd  and  the  whole  great  shining 
summer  scene  with  the  eye  of  the  artist  and  of  the 
lover  of  displayed  life.  For  Rowland  meanwhile 
the  time  passed  well;  Cecilia's  visitor  held  his  at 
tention  fast.  Whenever  Hudson  surpassed  himself 
in  confidence  or  in  magniloquence  his  hostess  broke 
into  a  long,  light,  ambiguous  laugh. 

"Do  you  find  me  more  of  a  fool  than  usual  ?"  the 
young  man  then  demanded.  "Have  I  said  any 
thing  so  ridiculous?" 

"Go  on,  go  on,"  Cecilia  replied.  "You  're  but 
too  much  your  wondrous  self.  Show  Mr.  Mallet 
how  Mr.  Striker  read  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  on  the  4th  of  July." 

Hudson,  like  many  men  with  a  turn  for  the  plastic 
arts,  was  an  excellent  mimic,  and  he  represented 
with  equal  truth  and  drollery  the  accent  and  atti 
tude  of  a  pompous  country  lawyer  sustaining  the 
burden  of  this  heavy  honour  of  our  national  festi 
val.  The  sonorous  twang,  the  seesaw  gestures,  the 
patriotic  pronunciation  were  vividly  reproduced. 
But  Cecilia's  manner  and  the  young  man's  quick 
response  ruffled  a  little  poor  Rowland's  responsible 
mind.  He  wondered  if  his  cousin  were  not  sacri 
ficing  the  faculty  of  reverence  in  her  bright  bene 
ficiary  to  her  need  for  amusement.  Hudson  made 
no  serious  rejoinder  to  Rowland's  compliment  on 
his  statuette  until  he  rose  to  go.  Rowland  judged 
he  would  have  forgotten  it,  and  supposed  the  over 
sight  to  be  a  sign  of  the  indifference  of  conscious 
power.  But  Hudson  stood  a  moment  before  he  said 
good-night,  twirled  his  sombrero  and  hesitated  for 

25 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  first  time.  He  gave  Rowland  a  clear,  penetrat 
ing  glance,  and  then  with  a  wonderfully  frank,  ap 
pealing  smile,  "You  absolutely  meant,"  he  asked, 
"what  you  said  a  while  ago  about  that  thing  of 
mine  ?  It  's  good  —  essentially  good  ?" 

"I  really  meant  it,"  said  Rowland,  laying  a  kindly 
hand  on  his  shoulder.  "It  's  very  good  indeed.  It 's 
as  you  say,  essentially  good.  That 's  just  the  beauty 
and  the  interest  of  it." 

Hudson's  eyes  glowed  and  expanded;  he  looked 
for  some  time  in  silence  at  this  strange  utterer  of 
sweet  sounds.  "I  have  a  notion  you  really  know," 
he  said  at  last.  "  But  if  you  don't,  you  see,  it  does  n't 
much  matter." 

"My  cousin  asked  me  to-day,"  said  Cecilia,  "if 
I  supposed  you  knew  yourself  how  good  it  is." 

Hudson  stared,  flushing  a  little.  "Perhaps  not, 
then!" 

"That  may  very  well  be,"  said  Rowland.  "I  read 
in  a  book  the  other  day  that  great  talent  in  action 
—  in  fact  the  book  said  genius  —  is  a  kind  of  safe 
somnambulism.  The  artist  performs  great  feats  in 
a  lucky  dream.  We  must  n't  wake  him  up  lest  he 
should  lose  his  balance." 

"Oh,  when  he's  back  in  bed  again!"  Hudson 
answered  with  a  laugh.  "Yes,  call  it  a  lucky  dream. 
It  was  a  very  happy  one." 

"Tell  me  this,"  said  Rowland.  "Did  you  mean 
anything  very  particular  by  your  young  Water- 
drinker  ?  Does  he  represent  an  idea  ?  Is  he  a  pointed 
symbol  ?" 

Hudson  raised  his  eyebrows  and  gently  stroked 

26 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  hair.  "Why,  he  's  youth,  you  know;  he  's  inno 
cence,  he  's  health,  he 's  strength,  he  's  curiosity. 
Yes,  he  's  a  lot  of  grand  things." 

"And  is  the  cup  also  a  symbol  ?" 

"The  cup  is  knowledge,  pleasure,  experience. 
Anything  of  that  kind." 

"Then  he  's  drinking  very  deep,"  said  Rowland. 

Hudson  gave  an  approving  nod.  "Well,  poor 
wretch,  you  would  n't  have  him  die  of  thirst,  would 
you  ?"  But  without  awaiting  a  reply  he  called  good 
night  from  the  garden-path  and  lost  himself  in  the 
darkness. 

"Well,  what  do  you  make  of  him  ?"  asked  Cecilia, 
returning  a  short  time  afterwards  from  a  visit  of 
investigation  in  respect  to  the  number  of  Bessie's 
blankets. 

Rowland  replied  after  a  little  by  a  question  of  his 
own.  "Isn't  he  a  case  of  what  's  called  the  artistic 
temperament  ?  That 's  interesting  to  see,  for  the 
Mikes'  of  us." 

"Speak  for  your  own  temperament!  But  he  's 
a  very  odd  creature,"  Cecilia  conceded. 

"Who  are  his  people?  what  has  been  his  educa 
tion  ?"  Rowland  asked. 

"He  has  had  no  education  beyond  what  he  has 
picked  up  with  little  trouble  for  himself.  His  mother 
is  a  widow,  of  a  Massachusetts  country  family,  a  little 
timid,  tremulous  woman,  always  troubled,  always 
on  pins  and  needles  about  her  son.  She  had  some 
property  herself  and  married  a  Virginia  gentleman 
—  an  owner  of  lands  and  slaves.  He  turned  out, 
I  believe,  quite  a  dreadful  sort  of  person  and  made 

27 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

great  havoc  with  the  resources,  whatever  they  were, 
that  she  always  speaks  of  as  their  fortune.  Every 
thing,  or  almost  everything,  melted  away,  including 
Mr.  Hudson  himself.  This  is  literally  true,  for  he 
drank  himself  to  death.  Ten  years  ago  his  wife  was 
left  a  widow,  with  scanty  means  and  a  couple  of 
growing  boys.  She  paid  her  husband's  debts  as  best 
she  could  and  came  to  establish  herself  here,  where, 
by  the  death  of  a  charitable  relative,  she  had  inherited" 
an  old-fashioned  ruinous  house.  Roderick,  our  friend, 
was  her  pride  and  joy;  but  Stephen,  the  elder,  was  her 
comfort  and  support.  I  remember  him  later;  he  was 
a  plain-faced,  sturdy,  practical  lad,  very  different  from 
his  brother  and  in  his  way,  I  imagine,  the  making  of 
a  useful  man.  When  the  war  broke  out  he  found  the 
New  England  blood  running  thicker  in  his  veins  than 
the  Virginian,  and  immediately  obtained  a  commission. 
He  fell  in  some  small  hole-and-corner  engagement, 
leaving  his  mother  inconsolable.  Roderick,  however, 
has  given  her  plenty  to  think  about,  and  she  has 
induced  him  by  some  mysterious  art  to  take  up  a 
profession  that  he  abhors  and  for  which  he  is  about 
as  fit  as  I  am  to  drive  a  locomotive.  He  grew  up  a  la 
grace  de  Dieu ;  he  had  no  guidance  —  he  could 
bear  no  control;  he  could  only  be  horribly  spoiled. 
Three  or  four  years  ago  he  broke  off  his  connexion 
with  a  small  college  in  this  part  of  the  state,  where, 
I  'm  afraid,  he  had  given  a  good  deal  more  atten 
tion  to  novels  and  billiards  than  to  mathematics 
and  Greek.  Since  then  he  has  been  reading  law  at 
the  rate  of  a  page  a  day.  If  he 's  ever  admitted  to 
practice  I  'm  afraid  all  my  friendship  will  scarce  avail 

28 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  make  me  give  him  my  business.  Good,  bad  or 
indifferent,  the  boy 's,  as  you  say,  an  artist  —  an 
artist  to  his  fingers'  ends." 

"Why  then,"  asked  Rowland,  "does  n't  he  go  right 
in  for  what  he  can  do  ?" 

"For  several  reasons.  In  the  first  place  I  don't 
think  he  more  than  half  suspects  his  ability.  The  flame 
smoulders,  but  it 's  never  fanned  by  the  breath  of 
criticism.  He  sees  nothing,  hears  nothing,  to  help 
him  to  self-knowledge.  He  's  hopelessly  discontented, 
but  he  does  n't  know  where  to  look  for  help.  Then  his 
mother,  as  she  one  day  confessed  to  me,  has  a  holy 
horror  of  a  profession  which  consists  exclusively,  as 
she  supposes,  in  making  figures  of  people  divested 
of  all  clothing.  Sculpture,  to  her  mind,  is  an  insidi 
ous  form  of  immorality,  and  for  a  young  man  of 
possibly  loose  leanings  she  considers  the  law  a  much 
safer  training.  Her  father  was,  by  her  account, 
an  eminent  judge,  she  has  two  brothers  at  the  bar, 
and  her  elder  son  had  made  a  very  promising  begin 
ning  in  the  same  line.  She  wishes  the  tradition  to 
be  kept  up.  I  'm  pretty  sure  the  law  won't  make 
Roderick's  fortune,  and  I  'm  afraid  it  will  spoil  his 
temper." 

"What  sort  of  a  temper  do  you  call  it  ?" 

"Oh,  one  to  be  trusted  on  the  whole.  It 's  subject, 
like  our  New  England  summer,  to  sudden  changes  — 
which  yet  don't  prevent  our  having  a  summer,  and 
a  magnificent  one.  I  have  known  it  to  breathe  flame 
and  fury  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  soft, 
sweet  music  early  on  the  morrow.  It  's  a  very  enter 
taining  temper  to  observe.  Fortunately  I  can  observe 

29 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

it  dispassionately,  for  I  'm  the  only  person  in  the 
place  he  has  not  quarrelled  with." 

"Has  he  then  no  companionship  ?  Who  's  the  Miss 
Garland  you  asked  about  ?" 

"A  young  woman  staying  with  his  mother,  a  sort  of 
far-away  cousin;  a  good,  plain,  honest  girl,  but  not 
a  person  to  represent  sport  for  the  artistic  tempera 
ment  or  to  minister  to  the  joy  of  life.  Roderick  has 
a  good  share  of  the  old  Southern  arrogance;  he  has 
the  aristocratic  temperament.  He  '11  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  small  townspeople;  he  says  they  're 
'ignoble/  He  can't  endure  his  mother's  friends  — 
the  old  ladies  and  the  ministers  and  the  tea-party 
people;  they  bore  him  to  death.  So  he  comes  and 
lounges  here  and  rails  at  every  thing  and  every  one." 

This  youthful  scoffer  reappeared  a  couple  of 
evenings  later  and  confirmed  the  friendly  feeling 
he  had  excited  on  Rowland's  part.  He  was  in  an 
easier  mood  than  before,  he  chattered  less  extrava 
gantly  and  asked  Rowland  a  number  of  rather 
primitive  questions  about  the  condition  of  the  fine 
arts  in  New  York  and  Boston.  Cecilia,  when  he 
had  gone,  said  that  this  had  been  the  grateful  effect 
of  Rowland's  eulogy  of  his  work.  Roderick  was 
acutely  sensitive,  and  Rowland's  intelligent  praise 
had  steadied  him:  he  had  heard  absolutely  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  the  voice  of  taste  and  of  author 
ity.  Rowland  recognised  afresh,  recognised  them  as 
irresistible  things,  his  personal  charm  and  his  pre 
sumable  gift.  He  had  an  indefinable  attraction  — 
the  something  tender  and  divine  of  unspotted, 
exuberant,  confident  youth.  The  next  day  was 

3° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Sunday,  and  Rowland  proposed  that  they  should 
take  a  long  walk  and  that  Roderick  should  show 
him  the  country.  The  young  man  assented  glee 
fully,  and  in  the  morning,  as  Rowland,  at  the  garden 
gate,  was  giving  his  hostess  God-speed  on  her  way 
to  church,  he  came  striding  along  the  grassy  margin 
of  the  road  and  out-whistling  the  music  of  the  church- 
bells.  It  was  one  of  those  lovely  days  of  the  last  of 
August  when  summer  seems  to  balance  in  the  scale 
with  autumn.  "Remember  the  day  and  take  care 
you  rob  no  orchards,"  said  Cecilia  as  they  separated. 
The  young  men  walked  away  at  a  steady  pace, 
over  hill  and  dale,  through  woods  and  fields,  and  at 
last  found  themselves  on  a  grassy  elevation  studded 
with  mossy  rocks  and  red  cedars.  Just  beneath 
them,  in  a  great  shining  curve,  flowed  the  generous 
Connecticut.  They  flung  themselves  on  the  grass 
and  tossed  stones  into  the  river;  they  talked,  they 
fell  into  intimacy,  like  old  friends.  Rowland  lit  a 
cigar  and  Roderick  refused  one  with  a  grimace  of 
extravagant  disgust.  He  thought  them  vile  things; 
he  did  n't  see  how  decent  people  could  tolerate  them. 
Rowland  was  amused  —  he  wondered  what  it  was 
that  made  this  ill-mannered  speech  seem  perfectly 
inoffensive  on  his  companion's  lips.  He  belonged  to 
the  race  of  mortals,  to  be  pitied  or  envied  according 
as  we  view  the  matter,  who  are  not  held  to  a  strict 
account  for  their  aggressions.  Looking  at  him  as 
he  lay  stretched  in  the  shade,  Rowland  vaguely  lik 
ened  him  to  some  beautiful,  supple,  restless,  bright- 
eyed  animal,  whose  motions  should  have  no  deeper 
warrant  than  the  tremulous  delicacy  of  its  structure 

31 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  seem  graceful  to  many  persons  even  when  they 
should  be  least  convenient.  Rowland  watched  the 
shadows  on  Mount  Holyoke,  listened  to  the  gurgle 
of  the  river  and  sniffed  the  balsam  of  the  pines. 
A  gentle  breeze  had  begun  to  tickle  their  summits 
and  brought  the  smell  of  the  mown  grass  across  from 
the  elm-dotted  river-meadows.  He  sat  up  beside  his 
companion  and  looked  away  at  the  far-spreading 
view,  which  affected  him  as  melting  for  them  both  into 
such  vast  continuities  and  possibilities  of  possession. 
It  touched  him  to  the  heart;  suddenly  a  strange  feel 
ing  of  prospective  regret  took  possession  of  him. 
Something  seemed  to  tell  him  that  later,  in  a  foreign 
land,  he  should  be  haunted  by  it,  should  remember 
it  all  with  longing  and  regret. 

"It  's  a  wretched  business,"  he  said,  "this  virtual 
quarrel  of  ours  with  our  own  country,  this  everlasting 
impatience  that  so  many  of  us  feel  to  get  out  of  it. 
Can  there  be  no  battle  then,  and  is  one's  only  safety 
in  flight  ?  This  is  an  American  day,  an  American 
landscape,  an  American  atmosphere.  It  certainly 
has  its  merits,  and  some  day  when  I  'm  shivering 
with  ague  in  classic  Italy  I  shall  accuse  myself  of 
having  slighted  them." 

Roderick  rose  on  still  lighter  wings  to  this  genial 
flight,  declaring  that  America  was  quite  good  enough 
for  him,  and  that  he  had  always  thought  it  the 
duty  of  an  honest  citizen  to  stand  by  his  own  country 
and  help  it  on.  He  had  evidently  thought  nothing 
whatever  about  it  —  he  was  launching  his  doctrine 
on  the  inspiration  of  the  moment.  The  doctrine 
expanded  with  the  occasion,  and  he  declared  that 

32 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  was  above  all  an  advocate  for  American  art.  He 
did  n't  see  why  we  should  n't  produce  the  greatest 
works  in  the  world.  We  were  the  biggest  people, 
and  we  ought  to  have  the  biggest  conceptions.  The 
biggest  conceptions,  of  course,  would  bring  forth 
in  time  the  biggest  performances.  We  had  only  to 
be  true  to  ourselves,  to  pitch  in  and  not  be  afraid, 
to  fling  Imitation  overboard  and  fix  our  eyes  upon 
our  National  Individuality.  "I  declare,"  he  cried, 
"there's  a  career  for  a  man,  and  I  have  twenty 
minds  to  embrace  it  on  the  spot  —  to  be  the  typical, 
original,  aboriginal  American  artist!  It  's  inspir- 
ing!" 

Rowland  burst  out  laughing  and  told  him  that  he 
liked  his  practice  better  than  his  theory  and  that  a 
saner  impulse  than  this  had  inspired  his  little  Water- 
drinker.  Roderick  took  no  offence  and  three 
minutes  afterwards  was  talking  volubly  of  some 
humbler  theme  —  only  half  heeded  by  his  friend, 
who  had  returned  to  cogitation.  At  last  Rowland 
delivered  himself  of  the  upshot  of  his  thought. 
"How  should  you  like,"  he  suddenly  demanded, 
"to  go  to  Rome?" 

Hudson  stared,  and  with  an  emphasis  which 
speedily  consigned  our  National  Individuality  to 
perdition,  responded  that  he  should  like  it  first-rate. 
"And  I  should  like,  by  the  same  token,"  he  added, 
"to  go  to  Athens,  to  Constantinople,  to  Damascus, 
to  the  holy  city  of  Benares,  where  there  's  a  golden 
statue  of  Brahma  twenty  feet  tall." 

"No,"  said  Rowland  with  a  certain  literalness, 
"  if  you  were  to  go  to  Rome  you  would  have  to  settle 

33 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

down  and  work.  Athens  might  help  you,  but  for 
the  present  I  should  n't  recommend  Benares." 

"  It  will  be  time  to  arrange  details  when  I  begin  to 
pack  my  trunk,"  Hudson  remarked. 

"  If  you  mean  to  turn  sculptor  the  sooner  you  pack 
your  trunk  the  better." 

"Oh,  but  I  'm  a  practical  man!  What  's  the  small 
est  sum  per  annum  on  which  one  can  keep  alive  the 
sacred  fire  ?" 

"What  's  the  largest  sum  at  your  disposal  ?"  Row 
land  returned. 

Roderick  stroked  his  light  moustache,  gave  it 
a  twist,  and  then  announced,  as  with  due  importance, 
"Three  hundred  dollars." 

"The  money  question  could  be  arranged,"  said 
Rowland.  "There  are  ways,  you  know,  of  raising 
money." 

' '  Know  ? '  How  should  I  know  ?  I  never  yet  dis 
covered  one." 

"One  of  them  consists,"  said  Rowland,  "in  hav 
ing  a  friend  with  a  good  deal  more  than  he  wants 
and  in  not  being  too  proud  to  accept  a  part  of  it." 

Roderick  stared  a  moment  and  his  face  flushed. 
"  Do  you  mean  —  do  you  mean  —  ?  "  He  stam 
mered,  he  panted;  he  was  greatly  excited. 

Rowland  got  up,  blushing  a  little,  and  Roderick 
sprang  to  his  feet.  "  In  three  words,  if  it  's  in  you 
really  to  go  in  for  sculpture,  you  ought  to  get  to  Rome 
and  study  the  antique.  To  get  to  Rome  you  need 
money.  I  'm  fond  of  fine  statues  and  busts,  but 
unfortunately  I  can't  make  them  myself.  I  have  to 
order  them  from  those  who  know  how.  I  order  a 

34 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

dozen  from  you,  to  be  executed  at  your  convenience. 
To  help  you  I  pay  you  in  advance." 

Roderick  pushed  off  his  hat  and  pressed  his  fore 
head,  still  gazing  at  his  companion.  "Upon  my  soul, 
you  believe  in  me!  "  he  cried  at  last. 

"Allow  me  to  explain,"  said  Rowland.  "I  believe 
in  you  if  you  're  prepared  to  work  and  to  wait  and 
to  struggle  and  to  exercise  a  great  many  virtues. 
And  then  I  'm  afraid  to  say  it,  to  force  it  upon  you, 
lest  I  should  disturb  you  more  than  I  should  help 
you.  You  must  decide  for  yourself.  I  simply  offer 
you  an  opportunity." 

Hudson,  with  his  face  intensely  lighted,  stood  for 
some  time  profoundly  meditative.  "  You  Ve  not  seen 
my  other  things,"  he  said  suddenly.  "Come  and 
look  at  them." 

"Now?" 

"Yes,  now.  We'll  walk  home.  We'll  settle  the 
question." 

He  passed  his  hand  through  Rowland's  arm  and 
they  retraced  their  steps.  They  reached  the  town 
and  made  their  way  along  a  broad  country  street, 
dusky  with  the  shade  of  magnificent  elms.  Row 
land  felt  his  companion's  arm  tremble  in  his  own. 
They  stopped  at  a  large  white  house  flanked  with 
melancholy  hemlocks,  and  passed  through  a  little 
front  garden  paved  with  moss-coated  bricks,  and 
ornamented  with  parterres  enclosed  in  ragged  box 
edges.  The  mansion  had  an  air  of  antiquated  dig 
nity,  but  it  had  seen  its  best  days  and  evidently 
sheltered  a  shrunken  household.  Mrs.  Hudson, 
Rowland  was  sure,  might  be  seen  in  the  garden  of 

35 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

a  morning,  in  a  white  apron  and  a  pair  of  old  gloves, 
engaged  in  frugal  horticulture.  Roderick's  studio 
was  behind,  in  the  basement;  a  large  empty  room 
with  the  paper  peeling  off  the  walls.  This  repre 
sented,  in  the  fashion  of  fifty  years  ago,  a  series 
of  small  fantastic  landscapes  of  a  hideous  pattern, 
and  the  young  sculptor  had  presumably  torn  it  away 
in  great  scraps  at  moments  of  aesthetic  exaspera 
tion.  On  a  board  in  a  corner  was  a  heap  of  clay, 
and  on  the  floor,  against  the  wall,  stood  some  dozen 
medallions,  busts  and  figures  in  various  stages  of 
completion.  To  exhibit  them  Roderick  had  to  place 
them  one  by  one  on  the  end  of  a  long  packing-box 
which  served  as  a  pedestal.  He  did  so  silently, 
making  no  explanations  and  looking  at  them  him 
self  with  a  strange  air  of  refreshed  credulity.  Most 
of  the  things  were  portraits,  and  the  three  at  which 
he  looked  longest  were  finished  busts.  One  was  a 
colossal  head  of  a  negro,  tossed  back,  defiant,  with 
distended  nostrils;  one  was  the  portrait  of  a  young 
man  whom  Rowland  immediately  perceived  by  the  re 
semblance  to  be  his  lost  brother;  the  last  represented 
a  gentleman  with  a  pointed  nose,  a  long  close-shaven 
upper  lip  and  a  tuft  on  the  end  of  his  chin.  This  was 
a  face  peculiarly  unadapted  to  sculpture;  but  as  a 
piece  of  modelling  it  was  the  best,  and  it  was  ad 
mirable.  It  reminded  Rowland,  in  its  homely  vera 
city,  its  quaint  closeness,  of  the  works  of  the  early 
Italian  Renaissance.  On  the  pedestal  was  cut  the 
name  —  Barnaby  Striker  Esq.  Rowland  recognised 
in  these  characters  the  legal  luminary  from  whom 
his  companion  had  undertaken  to  borrow  the  vital 

36 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

heat,  and  though  the  irony  of  portraiture  was  not 
gross  it  betrayed  comically  to  one  who  could  relish 
the  secret  that  the  features  of  the  original  had  often 
been  at  the  mercy  of  an  exasperated  eye.  Beside 
these  appeared  several  rough  studies  of  the  nude 
and  two  or  three  figures  of  a  fanciful  kind.  The 
most  noticeable  (and  it  had  singular  beauty)  was 
a  small  modelled  design  for  a  sepulchral  monument, 
that  evidently  of  Stephen  Hudson.  The  young 
soldier  lay  sleeping  eternally  with  his  hand  on  his 
sword,  the  image  of  one  of  the  crusaders  Roderick 
had  dreamed  of  in  one  of  the  cathedrals  he  had  never 
seen. 

Rowland  made  no  haste  to  pronounce;  too  much 
depended  on  his  judgement.  "Upon  my  word," 
cried  his  friend  at  last,  "they  seem  to  me,  you  know, 
very  decent,  not  too  helpless!" 

And  in  truth  as  Rowland  looked  he  saw  they  were 
strong.  They  were  youthful,  awkward,  ignorant; 
the  effort  often  was  more  apparent  than  the  success. 
But  the  effort  was  signally  powerful  and  intelligent; 
it  seemed  to  Rowland  that  with  its  aim  clearer  it  might 
easily  hit  the  highest  mark.  Here  and  there  indeed 
the  mark  had  already  been  hit  with  a  masterly  ring. 
Rowland  turned  to  Hudson,  who  stood  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets  and  his  hair  very  much  crumpled, 
looking  at  him  askance.  The  light  of  admiration  was 
in  Rowland's  eyes,  and  it  caused  the  young  man's 
handsome  watching  face  to  shine  out  in  response. 
Rowland  said  at  last  simply:  "You  've  only  to  work 
hard." 

"I  think  I  know  what  that  means,"  Roderick  an- 

37 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

swered.  He  turned  away,  threw  himself  on  a  rickety 
chair  and  sat  for  some  moments  with  his  elbows  on 
his  knees  and  his  head  in  his  hands.  "Work  — 
work  ?"  he  said  at  last,  looking  up.  "Ah,  if  I  could 
only  begin!"  He  glanced  round  the  room  a  mo 
ment,  and  his  eye  encountered  on  the  mantel-shelf 
the  inimitable  presence  of  Mr.  Barnaby  Striker. 
His  smile  vanished  —  he  stared  at  it  with  an  air 
of  concentrated  enmity.  "I  want  to  begin,"  he  cried, 
"and  I  cai/t  make  a  better  beginning  than  this! 
Good-bye,  Mr.  Barnaby  Striker!"  He  strode  across 
the  room,  seized  a  hammer  that  lay  at  hand,  and 
before  Rowland  could  interfere,  in  the  interest  of  art 
if  not  of  morals,  dealt  a  merciless  blow  upon  Mr. 
Striker's  skull.  The  bust  cracked  into  a  dozen  pieces, 
which  toppled  with  a  great  crash  upon  the  floor. 
Rowland  relished  neither  the  destruction  of  the 
image  nor  his  companion's  expression  in  working 
it,  but  as  he  was  about  to  express  his  displeasure 
the  door  opened  and  gave  passage  to  a  fresh-looking 
girl.  She  came  in  with  a  rapid  step  and  startled  face, 
as  if  she  had  been  alarmed  by  the  noise.  Meeting 
the  heap  of  shattered  clay  and  the  hammer  in  Roder 
ick's  hand,  she  gave  a  cry  of  horror.  Her  voice  died 
away  as  she  saw  Rowland  was  a  stranger,  but  she 
had  sounded  her  reproach.  "Why,  Roderick,  what 
on  earth  have  you  done  ?" 

Roderick  gave  a  joyous  kick  to  the  shapeless  frag 
ments.  "I  've  driven  the  money-changers  out  of 
the  temple!  " 

The  traces  retained  shape  enough  to  be  recognised, 
and  she  gave  a  little  moan  of  pity.  She  seemed  not 

38 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  understand  the  young  man's  allegory,  but  none 
the  less  to  feel  that  it  pointed  to  some  great  purpose, 
which  must  yet  be  an  evil  one  from  its  being  ex 
pressed  in  such  a  lawless  fashion,  and  to  perceive 
that  Rowland  was  in  some  way  accountable  for  it. 
She  looked  at  him  with  prompt  disapproval  and 
turned  away  through  the  open  door.  Rowland  looked 
after  her  with  immediate  interest. 


Ill 


EARLY  on  the  morrow  he  received  a  visit  from  his 
new  friend.  Roderick  was  in  a  state  of  extreme 
exhilaration,  tempered,  however,  by  a  certain  amount 
of  righteous  wrath.  He  had  had  a  row  at  home,  as 
he  called  it,  but  had  remained  master  of  the  situa 
tion.  He  had  shaken  the  dust  of  Mr.  Striker's  office 
from  his  feet. 

"I  had  it  out  last  night  with  my  mother,"  he  said. 
"I  dreaded  the  scene,  for  she  takes  things  terribly 
hard.  She  does  n't  scold  nor  storm,  and  she  does  n't 
argue  nor  insist.  She  sits  with  her  eyes  full  of  tears 
that  never  fall,  and  looks  at  me,  when  I  vex  her, 
as  if  I  were  a  monster  of  depravity.  And  the  trouble 
is  that  I  was  born  to  vex  her.  She  does  n't  trust  me; 
she  never  has,  and  she  never  will.  I  don't  know  what 
I  've  done  to  set  her  against  me,  but  ever  since  I 
can  remember  I  've  been  looked  at  with  tears.  The 
trouble  is,"  he  went  on,  giving  a  twist  to  his  moustache, 
"  I  've  been  too  great  a  mollycoddle.  I  've  been  sprawl 
ing  all  my  days  by  the  maternal  fireside,  and  my 
dear  mother  has  grown  used  to  bullying  me.  I  've 
made  myself  cheap!  If  I  'm  not  in  my  bed  by  eleven 
o'clock  the  cook  's  sent  out  to  explore  for  me  with 
a  lantern.  When  I  think  of  it  I  'm  quite  sick  of  my 
meekness.  It  's  rather  a  hard  fate,  to  live  like 
a  tame  cat  and  to  pass  for  a  desperado.  I  should 

40 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

like  for  six  months  to  lead  Mrs.  Hudson  the  life 
some  fellows  lead  their  mothers!" 

"Allow  me  to  believe,"  said  Rowland,  "that  you  'd 
like  nothing  of  the  sort.  If  you  've  acted  as  a  gentle 
man  don't  spoil  it  by  pretending  you  'd  have  pre 
ferred  to  be  a  brute.  You  Ve  been  very  happy  in 
spite  of  your  virtues,  and  there  are  worse  fates  in  the 
world  than  being  loved  too  well.  I  've  not  had 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  your  mother,  but  I  '11  lay  you 
a  wager  that  this  is  where  the  shoe  pinches.  She  's 
passionately  fond  of  you,  and  her  hopes,  like  all 
intense  hopes,  are  next  neighbours  to  alarms  and 
despairs."  Rowland,  as  he  spoke,  had  an  instinctive 
vision  of  the  sentiments  infallibly  entertained  for 
this  beautiful  and  amusing  youth  by  the  women  of 
his  house. 

Roderick  frowned,  and  with  an  impatient  gesture, 
"I  do  her  justice,"  he  cried;  "may  she  never  do  me 
less!"  Then  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  "I  '11  tell 
you  the  perfect  truth,"  he  went  on;  "I  have  to  fill 
a  double  place.  I  have  to  be  my  brother  as  well  as 
myself.  It  's  a  good  deal  to  ask  of  a  man,  especially 
when  he  has  so  little  talent  as  I  for  being  what  he  's 
not.  When  we  were  both  young  together  I  was  the 
curled  darling.  I  had  the  silver  mug  and  the  biggest 
piece  of  pudding,  and  I  stayed  indoors  to  be  kissed 
by  the  ladies  while  he  made  mud-pies  in  the  garden. 
In  fact,  you  know,  he  was  much  more  the  right  thing. 
When  he  was  brought  home  that  horrible  night  with 
a  piece  of  shell  in  his  skull,  my  poor  mother  began 
to  think  she  had  n't  loved  him  enough.  I  remem 
ber,  as  she  hung  round  my  neck  sobbing,  before 

41 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  coffin,  she  told  me  that  I  must  be  to  her  every 
thing  that  he  would  have  been.  I  made  no  end  of 
vows,  but  I  have  n't  kept  them  all.  I  've  been  very 
different  from  Stephen.  I  've  been  idle,  restless, 
egotistical,  discontented.  I  've  done  no  vulgar  harm, 
I  believe,  but  I  've  done  no  vulgar  good.  My  brother, 
if  he  had  lived,  would  have  made  fifty  thousand 
dollars  and  had  the  parlour  done  up.  My  mother, 
brooding  night  and  day  on  her  bereavement,  has 
come  to  fix  her  ideal  in  little  attentions  of  that  sort. 
Judged  by  that  standard  I  'm  nowhere." 

Rowland  was  at  a  loss  what  to  believe  of  this 
account  of  his  friend's  domestic  circumstances;  it 
had  an  honourable  candour,  but  would  be  probably 
open  to  control.  "You  must  lose  no  time  in  pro 
ducing  some  important  thing,"  he  answered;  "then 
with  the  proceeds  you  can  do  up  the  whole  house." 

"So  I  've  told  her;  but  she  only  half  believes  in 
'  art,'  anyway.  She  can  see  no  good  in  my  modelling 
from  the  life;  it  seems  to  her  a  snare  of  the  enemy. 
She  would  fain  see  me  all  my  days  tethered  to  the 
law  like  a  browsing  goat  to  a  stake.  In  that  way 
I'm  kept  before  her.  'It's  a  more  natural  occupation!' 
—  that 's  all  I  can  get  out  of  her.  A  more  natural 
damnation!  Is  it  a  fact  that  artists  in  general  are 
such  bold,  bad  men  ?  I  've  never  had  the  pleasure 
of  knowing  one,  so  I  can't  refute  her  with  an  ex 
ample.  She  has  the  advantage  of  me,  because  she 
formerly  knew  a  portrait-painter  at  Richmond, 
who  did  her  miniature  in  black  lace  mittens  (you 
may  see  it  on  the  parlour  table)  and  who  used  to 
drink  raw  brandy  and  beat  his  wife.  I  promised 

42 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

her  last  night  that  whatever  I  might  do  to  my  wife 
I  would  never  beat  my  mother,  and  that  as  for 
brandy,  raw  or  diluted,  I  detested  it.  She  sat 
silently  crying  for  an  hour,  during  which  I  expended 
treasures  of  eloquence.  It  's  a  good  thing  to  have 
to  take  stock  of  one's  intentions,  and  I  assure  you 
that  pleading  my  cause,  I  became  agreeably  im 
pressed  with  the  elevated  character  of  my  own. 
I  kissed  her  solemnly  at  last  and  told  her  that  I  had 
said  everything  and  that  she  must  make  the  best 
of  it.  This  morning  she  has  dried  her  eyes,  but 
I  warrant  you  it  is  n't  a  racketing  house.  I  long  to 
be  out  of  it!" 

"  I  'm  extremely  sorry  to  have  brought  things  to 
such  a  crisis,"  said  Rowland.  "I  owe  your  mother 
some  amends;  will  it  be  possible  for  me  to  see  her  ?" 

"If  you  '11  see  her  it  will  smooth  matters  vastly; 
though,  to  tell  the  truth,  she  '11  need  all  her  courage 
to  face  you,  for  she  considers  you  an  agent  of  the 
foul  fiend.  She  doesn't  see  why  you  should  have 
come  here  and  set  me  by  the  ears:  you  're  made 
to  poison  ingenuous  minds  and  desolate  doting 
mothers.  I  leave  it  to  you  personally  to  answer  these 
charges.  You  see,  what  she  can't  forgive  —  what 
she  '11  not  really  ever  forgive  —  is  your  taking  me 
off  to  Rome.  Rome  's  an  evil  word  in  my  mother's 
vocabulary,  to  be  said  below  the  breath,  as  you  'd 
repeat 'some  profanity  or  tell  a  'low'  story.  North 
ampton  Mass  is  in  just  the  centre  of  Christendom, 
and  Rome  far  off  in  the  mere  margin,  benighted 
heathendom  too  at  that,  into  which  it  can  do  no 
proper  moral  man  any  good  to  penetrate.  And 

43 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

there  was  I  but  yesterday  a  regular  attendant  at  that 
repository  of  every  virtue,  Mr.  Striker's  office!" 

"And  does  Mr.  Striker  know  of  your  decision  ?" 
Rowland  asked. 

"Why,  sure!  Mr.  Striker,  you  must  know,  is 
not  simply  a  good-natured  attorney  who  lets  me  dog's- 
ear  his  law-books.  He  's  a  particular  friend  and 
general  adviser.  He  looks  after  my  mother's  pro 
perty  and  kindly  consents  to  regard  me  as  part  of  it. 
Our  opinions  have  always  been  as  opposite  as  the 
poles,  but  I  freely  forgive  him  his  zealous  attempts 
to  unscrew  my  headpiece  and  set  it  on  another  way. 
He  never  understood  me,  and  it  was  useless  to  try 
to  make  him.  We  speak  a  different  language  — 
we  're  made  of  a  different  clay.  I  had  a  fit  of  rage 
yesterday,  when  I  smashed  his  bust,  at  the  thought 
of  all  the  bad  blood  he  had  stirred  up  in  me:  it 
did  me  good  and  it  's  all  over  now.  I  don't  hate 
him  any  more;  I  'm  rather  sorry  for  him.  See  how 
you  've  improved  me!  I  must  have  seemed  to  him 
wilfully,  wickedly  stupid,  and  I  'm  sure  he  only 
tolerated  me  on  account  of  his  great  regard  for  my 
mother.  This  morning  I  took  the  bull  by  the  horns. 
I  picked  up  an  armful  of  law-books  that  have  been 
gathering  the  dust  in  my  room  for  the  last  year  and 
a  half,  and  presented  myself  at  the  office.  'Allow 
me  to  put  these  back  in  their  places,'  I  said.  'I 
shall  never  have  need  for  them  more  —  never  more, 
never  more,  never  more  ! '  'So  you've  learned  every 
thing  they  contain  ?'  says  the  great  Striker,  leering 
over  his  spectacles:  'better  late  than  never  !  '  '  I  've 
learned  nothing  that  you  can  teach  me,'  I  cried. 

44 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

'But  I  shall  tax  your  patience  no  longer.  I  'm  going 
to  be  a  sculptor.  I  'm  going  to  Rome  to  work  at 
that.  So  now  there!  I  won't  bid  you  good-bye 
just  yet;  I  shall  see  you  again.  But  I  bid  good-bye 
here  with  enthusiasm  to  these  four  detested  walls 
—  to  this  living  tomb !  I  did  n't  know  till  now  how 
I  hated  the  place!  My  compliments  to  Mr.  Spooner, 
and  my  thanks  for  all  you  Ve  not  made  of  me!" 

"I  'm  glad  to  know  you  're  to  see  Mr.  Striker 
again,"  Rowland  answered,  correcting  a  primary 
inclination  to  show  himself  as  taking  this  report 
for  an  amusing  burlesque  of  the  facts.  "You  cer 
tainly  owe  him  a  respectful  farewell,  even  if  he  has 
not  understood  you.  I  confess  you  rather  strike  me 
at  moments  as  a  little  of  a  hard  sum.  There  's  an 
other  person,"  he  presently  added,  "whose  opinion 
as  to  your  new  career  I  should  like  to  hear.  What 
does  your  friend  Miss  Garland  think  ?" 

Hudson  looked  at  him  keenly,  with  a  slight  change 
of  colour.  Then  with  a  conscious  smile,  "What 
makes  you  suppose  she  thinks  anything  ?"  he  asked. 

"Because,  though  I  saw  her  but  for  a  moment 
yesterday,  she  struck  me,  just  in  that  moment,  as 
a  decidedly  positive  quantity,  and  I  'm  sure  she  has 
opinions." 

The  smile  on  Roderick's  mobile  face  turned  dim. 
"Oh,  she  thinks  what  I  think!"  he  answered. 

Before  the  two  young  men  separated  Rowland  at 
tempted  to  give  as  harmonious  a  shape  as  possible 
to  his  companion's  future.  "I  Ve  launched  you, 
as  I  may  say,"  he  said,  "and  I  feel  as  if  I  ought 
to  see  you  into  port.  I  'm  older  than  you  and  know 

45 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  world  better,  and  it  seems  well  that  we  should 
voyage  a  while  together.  It 's  on  my  conscience  that 
I  ought  to  take  you  to  Rome,  walk  you  through  the 
Vatican,  and  then  lock  you  up  with  a  heap  of  clay. 
I  sail  on  the  5th  of  September;  can  you  make  your 
preparations  to  start  with  me?" 

Roderick  assented  to  all  this  with  an  air  of  luxu 
rious  surrender  to  his  friend's  wisdom  that  ex 
pressed  more  than  any  formal  pledge.  "  I  've  no 
preparations  to  make,"  he  said  with  a  smile,  raising 
his  arms  and  letting  them  fall  as  if  to  indicate  his 
unencumbered  condition.  "What  I  'm  to  take  with 
me  I  carry  here!"  And  he  tapped  his  forehead. 

"Happy  man!"  murmured  Rowland  with  a  sigh, 
thinking  of  the  light  stowage  in  his  own  organism, 
in  the  region  indicated  by  Roderick,  and  of  the 
heavy  one  of  bags  and  boxes  in  deposit  at  his  bank 
er's. 

When  his  companion  had  left  him  he  went  in 
search  of  Cecilia.  She  was  sitting  at  work  at  a  shady 
window,  and  welcomed  him  to  a  low  chintz-covered 
chair.  He  sat  some  time  thoughtfully  snipping  wools 
with  her  scissors;  he  expected  criticism  and  he  was 
bracing  himself.  At  last  he  told  her  of  Roderick's 
decision  and  of  his  own  part  in  the  matter.  Cecilia, 
besides  an  extreme  surprise,  exhibited  a  certain  fine 
displeasure  at  his  not  having  asked  her  advice. 

"What  would  you  have  said  then  if  I  had  ?"  he 
demanded. 

"I  should  have  said  in  the  first  place  'Oh,  for 
pity's  sake,  don't  carry  off  the  person  in  all  North 
ampton  who  most  amuses  me  !  '  I  should  have  said 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  the  second  place  'Nonsense!  the  boy  's  doing  very 
well.  Let  well  alone!' 

"That  in  the  first  five  minutes.  What  would  you 
have  said  later  ?" 

"That  for  a  man  who  's  generally  averse  to  med 
dling,  you  were  suddenly  rather  officious."  Row 
land's  countenance  fell;  he  frowned  in  silence.  Ce 
cilia  looked  at  him  askance;  gradually  the  spark 
of  irritation  faded  from  her  eye.  "  Pardon  my  sharp 
ness,"  she  resumed  at  last.  "But  I'm  literally  in 
despair  at  losing  Roderick  Hudson.  His  visits  in 
the  evening,  for  the  past  year,  have  kept  me  alive. 
They  've  given  a  point  to  a  very  dull  time  —  a  shin 
ing  little  silver-tip  to  days  that  seemed  made  of 
a  baser  metal.  I  don't  say  he  's  a  phoenix  or  that 
he  's  always  an  angel,  never  a  bore  —  but  I  liked  to 
see  him.  Of  course,  however,  that  I  shall  miss  him 
sadly  is  not  a  reason  for  his  not  going  to  seek  his 
fortune.  Men  must  work  and  women  must  weep!" 

"Decidedly  not!"  said  Rowland  with  a  good 
deal  of  emphasis.  He  had  suspected  from  the  first 
hour  of  his  stay  that  Cecilia,  for  all  her  quiet  life, 
was  in  the  enjoyment  of  some  private  and  peculiar 
satisfaction,  and  he  discovered  that  she  found  it  in 
Hudson's  lounging  visits  and  communicative  youth. 
Now  he  wondered  whether,  responsibly  viewed,  her 
gain  in  the  matter  were  not  her  young  friend's  loss. 
It  was  evident  that  Cecilia  was  haunted  here  with 
no  morbid  vision  of  duty,  and  that  her  judgement, 
habitually  clear  under  the  demands  of  domestic  econ 
omy,  had  made  easy  terms,  her  dull  life  prompting, 
with  the  joy  of  eye  and  ear.  She  liked  her  young  friend 

47 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

just  as  he  was;  she  humoured  him,  flattered  him, 
laughed  at  him,  caressed  him  —  did  everything  but 
advise  him  right.  It  was  a  flirtation  without  the 
benefits  of  a  flirtation  for  Roderick.  She  was  too 
old  to  make  it  quite  exemplary  she  should  let  him 
fall  in  love  with  her,  which  might  have  done  him 
good;  and  it  was  her  perversity  to  keep  him  notori 
ously  fresh,  so  that  the  nonsense  he  talked  might 
never  transgress  a  certain  line.  It  was  quite  con 
ceivable  that  poor  Cecilia  should  desire  to  pass  the 
time;  but  if  one  had  philanthropically  embraced  the 
idea  that  something  considerable  might  be  made  of 
Roderick  it  was  impossible  not  to  see  that  her  friend 
ship  was  not  what  might  be  called  tonic.  So  at  least 
Rowland  reflected  in  the  glow  of  an  almost  creative 
ardour.  There  was  a  later  time  when  he  would  have 
been  grateful  if  Hudson's  susceptibility  to  the  relax 
ing  influence  of  lovely  women  might  have  been  limited 
to  such  inexpensive  tribute  as  he  rendered  this  excel 
lent  lady.  "  I  only  wish  to  remind  you,"  she  went  on, 
"that  you  're  likely  to  have  your  hands  rather  full." 
"I  've  thought  of  that,  and  I  positively  like  the 
idea;  liking  as  I  do  the  man.  I  told  you  the  other 
day,  you  know,  that  I  was  bored  to  feel  my  hands 
always  so  empty.  When  it  first  occurred  to  me  that 
I  might  start  our  young  friend  on  the  path  of  glory 
I  felt  as  if  I  had  an  unimpeachable  inspiration.  Then 
I  remembered  there  were  dangers  and  difficulties, 
and  asked  myself  whether  I  had  a  right  to  drag 
him  out  of  his  obscurity.  My  notion  of  his  really 
having  the  great  gift  answered  the  question.  He 
is  made  to  do  the  things  that  we  are  the  better  for 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

having.  I  can't  do  such  things  myself,  but  when  I 
see  a  young  man  of  genius  standing  helpless  and 
hopeless  for  want  of  capital,  I  feel  —  and  it  's  no 
affectation  of  humility,  I  assure  you  —  as  if  it  would 
give  at  least  a  reflected  usefulness  to  my  own  life  to 
offer  him  his  opportunity." 

"In  the  name  of  the  general  public  I  suppose  I 
ought  to  thank  you.  But  I  want  first  of  all  to  see 
where  my  own  interest  comes  in.  You  guarantee 
us,  at  any  rate,  I  hope,  all  the  beautiful  things." 

"A  masterpiece  a  year,"  said  Rowland  cheerily, 
"for  the  next  quarter  of  a  century." 

"It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  a  right  to  ask  more 
—  to  demand  that  you  guarantee  us  not  only  the 
development  of  the  artist  but  the  security  of  the  man." 

Rowland  became  grave  again.    "His  security?" 

"His  moral,  his  sentimental  security.  Here,  you 
see,  all  that  's  perfect.  We  are  all  under  a  tacit 
compact  to  keep  him  quiet.  Perhaps  you  believe  in 
the  necessary  turbulence  of  genius,  and  you  intend 
to  enjoin  upon  your  gifted  pupil  the  importance  of 
cultivating  his  passions." 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  believe  that  a  man  of  genius 
owes  as  much  deference  to  his  passions  as  any  other 
man,  but  not  a  particle  more,  and  I  confess  I  have 
a  strong  conviction  that  the  artist  is  better  for  lead 
ing  a  quiet  life.  That 's  what  I  shall  preach  to  my 
gifted  pupil,  as  you  call  him,  by  example  —  except 
that  I  'm  unfortunately  not  an  artist !  —  as  well  as 
by  precept.  You  evidently  believe,"  he  added  in 
a  moment,  "that  he  '11  lead  me  a  dance!" 

"No,  I  prophesy  nothing.    I  only  think  that  cir- 

49 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

cumstances,  with  our  young  man,  have  a  great  influ 
ence;  as  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  although  he  has 
been  fuming  and  fretting  here  for  the  last  five  years 
he  has  nevertheless  managed  to  make  the  best  of  us 
and  found  it  easy,  on  the  whole,  to  vegetate.  Trans 
planted  to  Rome  I  feel  sure  he  '11  put  forth  some 
wonderful  flowers.  I  should  like  vastly  to  see  the 
change.  You  must  write  me  about  it  from  stage  to 
stage.  I  hope  with  all  my  heart  that  the  fruit  will  be 
proportionate  to  the  foliage.  Don't  think  me  a  bird 
of  ill  omen;  only  remember  that  we  shall  consider 
you  Ve  really  taken  an  engagement." 

"A  man  should  make  the  most  of  himself  and  be 
helped  if  he  needs  help,"  Rowland  answered  after 
a  long  pause.  "Of  course  if  a  silk  balloon  is  inflated 
very  suddenly  and  very  fast  there  is  always  the 
danger  of  its  bursting.  But  I  nevertheless  approve 
of  a  certain  tension  of  one's  being.  It  's  what  a  man 
is  meant  for.  And  then  Roderick  is  n't  a  mere 
pretty  parachute.  And  then  too  I  believe  in  the 
essential  good  health  of  the  sincere  imagination.  A 
man  may  be  all  imagination  —  if  he  is  sincere." 

"Very  good,  since  you  Ve  thought  it  so  wonder 
fully  out,"  Cecilia  said  with  an  air  of  resignation 
that  made  Rowland  for  the  moment  seem  to  him 
self  eager  to  selfishness.  "We'll  drink  then  to-day 
at  dinner  to  the  imagination  —  I  mean  to  the  good 
health  —  of  our  friend." 

Having  it  -much  at  heart  to  convince  Mrs.  Hudson 
of  the  purity  of  his  intentions,  Rowland  waited  upon 
her  that  evening.  He  was  ushered  into  a  large  par 
lour  which  by  the  light  of  a  couple  of  candles  he 

50 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

perceived  to  be  very  meagrely  furnished  and  very 
tenderly  and  sparingly  used.  The  windows  were 
open  to  the  air  of  the  summer  night,  and  a  circle 
of  three  persons  was  temporarily  awed  into  silence 
by  his  appearance.  One  of  these  was  Mrs.  Hudson, 
who  was  sitting  at  one  of  the  windows,  empty-handed 
save  for  the  pocket-handkerchief  in  her  lap,  which 
was  held  with  an  air  of  familiarity  with  its  sadder 
uses.  Near  her,  on  the  sofa,  half-sitting,  half-loung 
ing,  in  the  attitude  of  a  visitor  outstaying  ceremony, 
with  one  long  leg  flung  over  the  other  and  a  large 
foot  in  a  clumsy  boot  swinging  to  and  fro  con 
tinually,  was  a  lean,  sandy-haired  gentleman  whom 
Rowland  recognised  as  the  original  of  the  portrait 
of  Mr.  Barnaby  Striker.  At  the  table,  near  the 
candles,  busy  with  a  substantial  piece  of  needle 
work,  sat  the  young  person  of  whom  he  had  had 
a  moment's  quickened  glimpse  in  Roderick's  studio 
and  whom  he  had  learned  to  be  Miss  Garland,  his 
companion's  kinswoman.  The  limpid  penetrating 
gaze  of  this  member  of  the  group  was  the  most 
effective  greeting  he  received.  Mrs.  Hudson  rose  with 
a  soft,  vague  sound  of  distress  and  stood  looking  at 
him  shrinkingly  and  helplessly,  as  if  sorely  tempted  to 
retreat  through  the  open  window.  Mr.  Striker  swung 
his  long  leg  a  trifle  defiantly.  No  one  evidently 
was  used  to  offering  hollow  welcomes  or  telling  polite 
fibs.  Rowland  introduced  himself;  he  had  come,  he 
might  say,  upon  business. 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Hudson  tremulously;  "I  know 
—  my  son  has  told  me.  I  suppose  it 's  better  I  should 
see  you.  Perhaps  you  '11  take  a  seat." 

51 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

With  this  invitation  Rowland  prepared  to  comply, 
and,  turning,  grasped  the  first  chair  that  offered  it 
self. 

"Not  that  one,"  said  a  full  grave  voice;  where 
upon  he  perceived  that-  a  thick  skein  of  sewing-silk 
had  been  suspended  in  entanglement  over  the  back 
for  the  purpose  of  being  wound  on  reels.  He  felt 
the  least  bit  irritated  at  the  curtness  of  the  warning, 
coming  as  it  did  from  a  young  woman  whose  coun 
tenance  he  had  mentally  pronounced  interesting  and 
with  regard  to  whom  he  was  conscious  of  the  germ  of 
the  inevitable  desire  to  produce  a  responsive  interest. 
And  then  he  thought  it  would  break  the  ice  to  say 
something  playfully  urbane. 

"Oh,  you  should  let  me  take  the  chair,"  he  an 
swered,  "  and  have  the  pleasure  of  holding  the  skein 
myself!" 

For  all  reply  to  this  sally  he  received  a  stare  of 
undisguised  amazement  from  Miss  Garland,  who 
then  looked  across  at  Mrs.  Hudson  with  a  glance 
which  plainly  said,  "You  see  he  's  quite  the  insinu 
ating  foreigner  we  feared."  The  elder  lady,  how 
ever,  sat  with  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground  and  her 
two  hands  tightly  clasped.  But  as  regards  Mrs. 
Hudson  Rowland  felt  much  more  compassion  than 
resentment;  her  attitude  was  not  coldness,  it  was  the 
instinct  of  fear,  almost  of  terror.  She  was  a  small, 
softly-desperate  woman,  whose  desperation  gave  her 
a  false  air  of  eagerness,  just  as  her  pale  troubled  face 
added  to  her  apparent  age.  After  looking  at  her  for 
some  minutes  Rowland  saw  that  she  was  still  young 
and  personable  and  that  she  must  have  been  a  very 

5* 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

girlish  bride.  She  had  had  beauty  at  that  hour, 
though  she  probably  had  looked  terribly  frightened 
at  the  altar.  Her  marked  refinement  of  line  and  sur 
face  seemed  to  tell  how  her  son  had  come  by  his  ele 
gance,  his  physical  finish.  She  wore  no  cap,  and  her 
auburn  hair,  which  was  of  extraordinary  fineness, 
was  smoothed  and  confined  with  Puritanic  precision. 
She  was  excessively  shy  and  altogether  most  humble- 
minded;  it  was  singular  to  see  a  woman  to  whom 
the  experience  of  the  elm-shaded  life  had  conveyed 
such  scanty  reassurance.  Rowland  began  immedi 
ately  to  like  her  and  to  feel  impatient  to  persuade  her 
that,  as  Cecilia  had  originally  said  of  him,  he  meant 
well.  He  foresaw  that  she  would  be  easy  to  persuade 
and  that  the  right  shade  of  encouragement — it  would 
have  to  be  only  the  right  one  —  would  probably  make 
her  pass  fluttering  from  distrust  into  an  oppressive  ex 
treme  of  confidence.  But  he  had  an  indefinable  sense 
that  the  person  who  was  testing  a  strong  young  eye 
sight  in  the  dim  candle-light  was  less  readily  beguiled 
from  her  mysterious  feminine  preconceptions.  Miss 
Garland,  according  to  Cecilia's  judgement,  as  Rowland 
remembered,  had  not  a  countenance  to  inspire  a  sculp 
tor;  but  it  seemed  to  Rowland  that  she  might  with 
some  success  hold  in  contemplation  a  man  whose  re 
lation  to  the  beautiful  was  amateurish.  She  was  not 
pretty  as  the  eye  of  habit  judges  prettiness,  but  he 
noted  that  when  he  had  made  the  observation  he  had 
somehow  failed  to  set  it  down  against  her,  for  he  had 
already  passed  from  measuring  contours  to  tracing 
meanings.  In  Mary  Garland's  face  there  were  many 
possible  ones,  and  they  might  give  him  the  more  to 

53 


RODERICK     HUDSON 

think  about  that  it  was  not  —  like  Roderick's  for 
instance  —  one  of  the  quick  and  mobile  faces  over 
which  expression  flickers  like  a  candle  in  a  wind. 
They  followed  each  other  slowly,  distinctly,  sincerely, 
and  you  might  almost  have  fancied  that  as  they  came 
and  went  they  gave  her  a  nameless  pain.  She  was 
tall  and  straight  and  had  an  air  of  maidenly  strength 
and  decision.  She  had  a  broad  forehead  and  dark 
eyebrows,  a  trifle  thicker  than  those  of  classic  beau 
ties;  her  dark  pupils,  a  trifle  heavy,  failed,  as  might 
be  said,  of  publicity  of  expression.  Her  features  were 
bravely  irregular,  and  her  mouth  enabled  her  smile  — 
which  was  the  principal  grace  of  her  physiognomy  — 
to  display  itself  with  magnificent  amplitude.  Row 
land  indeed  had  not  yet  seen  this  accident  produced; 
but  something  assured  him  that  when,  on  due  cause 
shown,  she  should  cease  to  be  serious,  it  would  be  like 
the  final  rising  of  the  plain  green  curtain  of  the 
old  theatre  on  some  —  not  very  modern  —  comedy. 
She  wore  a  scanty  white  dress  and  had  a  vaguely 
rustic,  provincial  air;  she  looked  like  a  distinguished 
villager.  She  was  evidently  a  girl  of  extreme  personal 
force,  but  she  lacked  pliancy.  She  was  hemming 
a  kitchen  towel  with  the  aid  of  a  large  steel  thimble. 
She  bent  her  almost  portentous  eyes  at  last  on  the 
work  again  and  let  Rowland  explain  himself. 

"I  've  become  suddenly  so  very  intimate  with 
your  son,"  he  said  at  last,  addressing  himself  to 
Mrs.  Hudson,  "that  it  seems  proper  I  should  make 
your  acquaintance." 

"Very  proper,"  murmured  the  poor  lady,  and  after 
a  moment's  hesitation  was  on  the  point  of  adding 

54 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

something  more.  But  Mr.  Striker  here  interposed, 
after  a  prefatory  clearance  of  the  throat. 

"  I  should  like  to  take  the  liberty,  sir,  of  address 
ing  you  a  simple  question.  For  how  long  a  period 
of  time  have  you  been  acquainted  with  our  young 
friend  ?"  He  continued  to  kick  the  air,  but  his  head 
was  thrown  back  and  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  opposite 
wall  as  if  to  avert  themselves  from  the  spectacle  of 
Rowland's  inevitable  confusion. 

"A  very  short  time,  I  confess.  Hardly  three 
days." 

"And  yet  you  call  yourself  intimate,  eh  ?  I  Ve 
been  seeing  Mr.  Roderick  daily  these  three  years, 
and  yet  it  was  only  this  morning  that  I  felt  as  if 
I  had  at  last  the  right  to  say  that  I  knew  him.  We 
had  a  few  moments'  conversation  in  my  office  which 
supplied  the  missing  links  in  the  evidence.  So  that 
now  I  do  venture  to  say  I  'm  acquainted  with  Mr. 
Roderick!  But  wait  three  years,  sir,  like  me!" 
And  Mr.  Striker  laughed  with  a  closed  mouth  and 
a  noiseless  shake  of  all  his  long  person. 

Mrs.  Hudson  smiled  confusedly,  at  hazard;  Miss 
Garland  kept  her  eyes  on  her  stitches.  But  it  seemed 
to  Rowland  that  the  latter  coloured  a  little.  "Oh, 
in  three  years,  of  course,"  he  said,  "we  shall  know 
each  other  better.  Before  many  years  are  over, 
madam,"  he  pursued,  "I  expect  the  world  to  know 
him.  I  expect  him  to  be  a  great  man!" 

Mrs.  Hudson  looked  at  first  as  if  this  could  be 
but  an  insidious  device  for  increasing  her  distress 
by  the  assistance  of  some  art  of  comedy.  Then  re 
assured  little  by  little  by  Rowland's  air  of  conviction, 

55 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

she  gave  him  an  appealing  glance  and  a  timorous 
"Really?" 

But  before  her  visitor  could  respond  Mr.  Striker 
again  intervened.  "Do  I  fully  apprehend  your 
expression?"  he  asked.  "Our  young  friend  is  to 
become  one  of  our  great  men  ?" 

"One  of  our  great  artists,  I  hope.  Perhaps  greater 
than  any." 

"This  is  a  new  and  interesting  view,"  said  Mr. 
Striker  with  an  assumption  of  judicial  calmness. 
"We  've  had  hopes  for  Mr.  Roderick,  but  I  confess 
that  if  I  've  rightly  understood  them  they  stopped 
short  of  towering  eminence.  We  shouldn't  have 
taken  the  responsibility  of  entertaining  that  idea 
for  him.  What  do  you  say,  ladies  ?  We  all  feel  about 
him  here  —  his  mother,  Miss  Garland  and  myself 

—  as  if  his  merits  were  rather  in  the  line  of  the  " 

—  and  Mr.  Striker  waved  his  hand  with  a  series  of 
fantastic  flourishes  in  the  air  —  "  of  the  light  orna 
mental."     Mr.  Striker  bore  his  recalcitrant  pupil  a 
grudge;    yet  he  was  evidently  trying  both  to  be  fair 
and  to  respect  the  susceptibilities  of  his  companions. 
He  was  still  unversed  in  the  mysterious  processes  of 
feminine  emotion.     Ten   minutes   before  there  had 
been  a  general  harmony  of  sombre  views;   but  on 
hearing  Roderick's  limitations  thus  distinctly  formu 
lated  to  a  stranger  the  two  ladies  mutely  protested. 
Mrs.  Hudson  uttered  a  short  faint   sigh,  and   Miss 
Garland  raised  her  eyes  toward  their  advocate  and 
visited  him  with  a  short  cold  glance. 

"I  'm  afraid,  Mrs.  Hudson,"  Rowland  pursued, 
evading  the  question  of  the  ultimate  future,  "that 

56 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

you  don't  at  all  thank  me  for  stirring  up  your  son's 
ambition  for  objects  that  lead  him  so  far  from  home. 
I  seem  to  feel  that  I  Ve  made  you  my  enemy." 

Mrs.  Hudson  covered  her  mouth  with  her  finger 
tips  and  looked  painfully  perplexed  between  the 
desire  to  confess  the  truth  and  the  fear  of  being  im 
polite.  "  My  cousin  's  no  one's  enemy,"  Miss  Gar 
land  hereupon  declared  gently,  but  with  the  same 
remorseless  consistency  with  which  she  had  made 
Rowland  relax  his  grasp  of  the  chair. 

"Does  she  leave  that  to  you  ?"  Rowland  ventured 
to  ask  with  a  smile. 

"We  are  inspired  with  none  but  Christian  senti 
ments,"  said  Mr.  Striker;  "Miss  Garland  perhaps 
most  of  all.  Miss  Garland,"  and  Mr.  Striker  waved  his 
hand  again  as  if  to  perform  an  introduction  which  had 
been  frivolously  omitted,  "  is  the  daughter  of  a  minis 
ter,  the  granddaughter  of  a  minister,  the  sister  of 
a  minister." 

Rowland  signified,  so  far  as  he  could  by  a  gesture, 
that  he  had  nothing  to  say  against  it,  and  the  girl 
prosecuted  her  work  with  quite  as  little  apparently 
either  of  embarrassment  or  elation  at  the  promulga 
tion  of  these  facts.  "  Mrs.  Hudson,  I  see,"  Mr. 
Striker  continued,  "  is  too  deeply  agitated  to  converse 
with  you  freely.  She  will  allow  me  to  address  you 
a  few  questions.  Would  you  kindly  inform  her  as 
exactly  as  possible  just  what  you  propose  to  do  with 
her  son  ?" 

The  poor  lady  fixed  her  eyes  appealingly  on  Row 
land's  face  and  seemed  to  say  that  Mr.  Striker  had 
spoken  her  desire,  though  she  herself  would  have 

57 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

expressed  it  less  crudely.  But  Rowland  saw  in  Mr. 
Striker's  many-wrinkled  light  blue  eye,  shrewd  at 
once  and  good-natured,  that  he  had  no  intention 
of  defiance,  and  that  he  was  simply  pompous  and 
conceited  and  sarcastically  compassionate  of  any 
scheme  of  things  in  which  Roderick  was  not  a 
negligeable  quantity. 

"Do,  my  dear  madam?"  demanded  Rowland. 
"I  don't  propose  to  do  anything.  He  must  do  for 
himself.  I  simply  offer  him  the  chance.  He  's  to 
study,  to  strive,  to  work  —  very  hard,  I  hope." 

"Ah,  not  too  hard,  please,"  murmured  Mrs.  Hud 
son  pleadingly,  wheeling  about  from  recent  alarms 
at  the  dolce  far  niente.  "He  's  not  very  strong, 
and  I  'm  afraid  the  climate  of  Europe  is  very  re 
laxing." 

"Ah,  study?"  repeated  Mr.  Striker.  "To  what 
line  of  study  is  he  to  direct  his  attention?"  Then 
suddenly,  with  an  impulse  of  disinterested  curiosity 
on  his  own  account,  "How  do  you  study  sculpture 
anyhow?" 

"  By  looking  at  models  and  imitating  them." 

"At  models,  eh  ?  To  what  kind  of  models  do  you 
refer?" 

"To  the  antique,  in  the  first  place." 

"Ah,  the  antique"  —  and  Mr.  Striker  gave  it  the 
jocose  intonation.  "  Do  you  hear,  madam  ?  Rod 
erick  is  going  off  to  Europe  to  learn  to  imitate  the 
antique." 

"I  suppose  it's  all  right,"  said  Mrs.  Hudson  while 
she  twisted  herself  in  a  sort  of  delicate  anguish. 

"An   antique,   as   I   understand   it,"   the   lawyer 

58 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

continued,  "is  an  image  of  a  pagan  deity,  with  con 
siderable  dirt  sticking  to  it,  and  no  arms,  no  nose  and 
no  clothing.  A  precious  model,  certainly!" 

"That  's  a  very  good  description  of  many,"  said 
Rowland  with  a  laugh. 

"Mercy!  Truly?"  asked  Mrs.  Hudson,  borrow 
ing  courage  from  his  urbanity. 

"But  a  sculptor's  studies,  you  intimate,  are  not 
confined  to  the  antique,"  Mr.  Striker  resumed. 
"After  he  has  been  looking  three  or  four  years  at 
the  objects  I  describe  — " 

"He  studies  the  living  model,"  said  Rowland. 

"Does  it  take  three  or  four  years?"  Mrs.  Hud 
son  hopelessly  enquired. 

"That  depends  upon  the  artist's  aptitude.  After 
twenty  years  a  real  artist  is  still  studying." 

"Oh,  my  poor  boy!"  moaned  Mrs.  Hudson,  find 
ing  the  prospect  under  every  light  still  terrible. 

"Now  this  study  of  the  living  model,"  Mr.  Striker 
pursued.  "Give  Mrs.  Hudson  a  sketch  of  that." 

"Oh  dear,  no!"  cried  Mrs.  Hudson  shrinkingly. 

"That  too,"  said  Rowland,  "is  one  of  the  reasons 
for  studying  in  Rome.  It  's  a  handsome  race,  you 
know,  and  you  find  very  well-made  people." 

"I  suppose  they  're  no  better  made  than  a  good 
tough  Yankee,"  objected  Mr.  Striker,  transposing 
his  interminable  legs.  "The  same  God  made  us!" 

"Surely,"  sighed  Mrs.  Hudson,  but  with  a  ques 
tioning  glance  at  her  visitor  which  showed  that  she 
had  already  begun  to  concede  much  weight  to  his 
opinion.  Rowland  hastened  to  express  his  assent 
to  Mr.  Striker's  proposition. 

59 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Miss  Garland  looked  up,  and,  after  a  moment's 
hesitation,  "Are  the  Roman  women  very  beautiful  ?" 
she  asked. 

Rowland  too,  in  answering,  hesitated;  he  was  look 
ing  at  her  kindly  enough.  "On  the  whole  I  prefer 
ours,"  he  said. 

She  had  dropped  her  work  in  her  lap;  her  hands 
were  crossed  upon  it,  her  head  thrown  a  little  back. 
She  had  evidently  expected  a  more  impersonal  reply 
and  she  was  not  satisfied.  For  an  instant  she  seemed 
inclined  to  make  a  rejoinder,  but  she  picked  up  her 
work  in  silence  and  drew  her  stitches  again. 

Rowland  had  for  the  second  time  the  feeling  that 
she  judged  him  a  person  of  a  disagreeably  sophisti 
cated  tone.  He  noticed  too  that  the  kitchen  towel 
she  was  hemming  was  terribly  coarse.  And  yet  his 
answer  had  a  resonant  inward  echo  and  he  repeated 
to  himself  "Yes,  on  the  whole  I  prefer  ours." 

"Well,  these  models,"  began  Mr.  Striker.  "You 
put  them  into  an  attitude,  I  suppose  ?" 

"An  attitude,  exactly." 

"And  then  you  sit  down  and  look  at  them  ?" 

"Ah,  you  mustn't  sit  too  long.  You  must  go  at 
your  clay  and  try  to  build  up  something  that  looks 
like  them." 

"Well,  there  you  are  with  your  model  in  an  atti 
tude  on  one  side,  yourself  in  an  attitude  too,  I  sup 
pose,  on  the  other,  and  your  pile  of  clay  in  the  middle, 
building  up,  as  you  say.  So  you  pass  the  morning. 
After  that  I  hope  you  go  out  and  take  a  walk  and 
rest  from  your  exertions." 

"Unquestionably.  But  to  an  artist  who  loves 

60 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  work  there  is  no  lost  time.    Everything  he  looks 
at  teaches  or  suggests  something." 

"That  's  a  tempting  doctrine  to  young  men  with 
a  taste  for  sitting  by  the  hour  with  the  page  un 
turned,  watching  the  flies  buzz,  or  the  frost  melt, 
on  the  window-pane.  Our  young  friend  in  this  way 
must  have  laid  up  stores  of  information  that  I  never 
suspected." 

"  It  's  very  possible,"  said  Rowland  with  an  unre- 
sentful  smile,  "that  he  will  prove  some  day  the  hap 
pier  artist  for  some  of  those  very  same  lazy  reveries." 

This  theory  was  apparently  very  grateful  to  Mrs. 
Hudson,  who  had  never  had  the  case  put  for  her 
son  with  such  ingenious  hopefulness,  and  who  found 
herself  disrelishing  the  singular  situation  of  seeming 
to  side  against  her  own  flesh  and  blood  with  a  lawyer 
whose  conversational  tone  betrayed  the  habit  of  public 
cross-questioning. 

"My  son,  then,"  she  ventured  to  enquire,  "my 
son  has  exceptional  —  what  you  would  call  remark 
able  —  powers  ?" 

"To  my  sense  distinctly  remarkable  powers." 

Poor  Mrs.  Hudson  actually  smiled,  broadly,  glee 
fully,  and  glanced  at  Miss  Garland  as  if  to  invite 
her  to  do  likewise.  But  the  girl's  face  remained  as 
serious  as  the  eastern  sky  when  the  opposite  sun 
set  is  too  feeble  to  make  it  glow.  "Do  you  really 
know  ?"  she  asked,  looking  at  Rowland. 

"One  can't  know  in  such  a  matter  save  after 
proof,  and  proof  takes  time.  But  one  can  believe." 

"And  you  believe?" 

"I  believe." 

61 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

But  even  then  Miss  Garland  vouchsafed  no  smile; 
her  face  became  graver  than  ever. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Mrs.  Hudson,  "we  must  hope 
that  it 's  all  for  the  best." 

Mr.  Striker  eyed  his  old  friend  for  a  moment  with 
a  look  of  some  displeasure;  he  saw  that  this  was 
but  a  cunning  female  device  for  pretending  still 
to  hang  back,  and  that,  through  some  untraceable 
logic  of  treachery,  she  was  now  taking  more  com 
fort  in  the  opinions  of  this  sophistical  stranger 
than  in  his  own  tough  dogmas.  He  rose  to  his  feet 
without  pulling  down  his  waistcoat,  but  with  a 
wrinkled  grin  at  the  perfidy,  let  alone  the  incon 
sistency,  of  women.  "Well,  sir,  Mr.  Roderick's 
powers  are  nothing  to  me,"  he  said,  "no,  nor  the 
use  he  makes  of  them.  Good  or  bad,  he  's  no  son  of 
mine.  But  in  a  friendly  way  I  'm  glad  to  hear  so 
fine  an  account  of  him.  I  'm  glad,  madam,  you  're 
so  satisfied  with  the  prospect.  Affection,  sir,  you  see, 
must  have  its  guarantees!"  He  paused  a  moment, 
stroking  his  beard,  with  his  head  inclined  and  one 
eye  half  closed,  looking  at  Rowland.  The  look 
was  grotesque,  but  it  was  significant,  and  it  puzzled 
Rowland  more  than  it  amused  him.  "I  suppose  you're 
a  very  brilliant  young  man,"  he  went  on,  "very 
enlightened,  very  cultivated,  quite  up  to  the  mark 
in  the  fine  arts  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  I  'm  a 
plain  practical  old  boy,  content  to  follow  an  honour 
able  profession  in  a  free  country.  I  did  n't  go  to  any 
part  of  Europe  to  learn  my  business;  no  one  took 
me  by  the  hand;  I  had  to  grease  my  wheels  myself, 
and  such  as  I  am,  I  'm  a  self-made  man,  every  inch 

62 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  me!  Well,  if  our  young  friend  's  booked  for  fame 
and  fortune  I  don't  suppose  his  going  to  Rome 
will  stop  him.  But,  mind  you,  it  won't  help  him  such 
a  long  way  neither.  If  you  've  undertaken  to  put 
him  through  there  's  a  thing  or  two  you  had  better 
remember.  The  crop  we  gather  depends  upon  the 
seed  we  sow.  He  may  be  the  biggest  genius  of  the 
age:  his  potatoes  won't  come  up  without  his  hoeing 
them.  If  he  takes  things  so  almighty  easy  as  —  well, 
as  one  or  two  young  fellows  of  genius  I  Ve  had  under 
my  eye  —  his  produce  will  never  gain  the  prize. 
Take  the  word  for  it  of  a  man  who  has  made  his 
way  inch  by  inch  and  does  n't  believe  that  we  wake 
up  to  find  our  work  done  because  we  have  lain  all 
night  a-dreaming  of  it:  anything  worth  doing  is 
plaguy  hard  to  do!  If  your  young  gentleman  finds 
everything  all  right,  and  has  a  good  time  of  it,  and 
says  he  likes  the  life,  it 's  a  sign  that  —  as  I  may  say 
—  you  had  better  step  round  to  the  office  and  look 
at  the  books.  That  's  all  I  desire  to  remark.  No 
offence  intended.  I  hope  you  '11  have  a  first-rate 
time  yourself." 

Rowland  could  honestly  reply  that  this  seemed 
pregnant  sense,  and  he  offered  Mr.  Striker  a  friendly 
hand-shake  as  the  latter  withdrew.  But  Mr.  Striker's 
rather  grim  view  of  matters  cast  a  momentary  shadow 
on  his  companions,  and  Mrs.  Hudson  seemed  to 
feel  that  it  necessitated  between  them  some  little 
friendly  agreement  not  to  be  overawed. 

Rowland  sat  for  some  time  longer,  partly  because  he 
wished  to  please  the  two  women  and  partly  because 
he  was  himself  strangely  beguiled.  There  was  some- 

63 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

thing  touching  in  their  worldly  fears  and  diffident 
hopes,  something  almost  terrible  in  the  way  poor 
little  Mrs.  Hudson  seemed  to  flutter  and  quiver  with 
maternal  passion.  She  put  forth  one  timid  conver 
sational  venture  after  another,  and  asked  Rowland 
a  number  of  questions  about  himself,  his  age,  his 
family,  his  occupations,  his  tastes,  his  religious  opin 
ions.  Rowland  had  an  odd  feeling  at  last  that  she 
had  begun  to  believe  him  very  exemplary  and  that 
she  might  make  later  some  perturbing  discovery. 
He  tried  therefore  to  invent  something  that  would 
prepare  her  to  find  him  fallible.  But  he  could  think 
of  nothing.  It  only  seemed  to  him  that  Miss  Gar 
land  secretly  mistrusted  him  and  that  he  must  leave 
her  to  render  him  the  service,  after  he  had  gone,  of 
making  him  the  object  of  a  little  conscientious  de 
rogation.  Mrs.  Hudson  talked  with  low-voiced  eager 
ness  about  her  son. 

"  He  's  very  loveable,  sir,  I  assure  you.  When  you 
come  to  know  him  you  '11  find  him  very  loveable. 
He  's  a  little  spoiled,  of  course;  he  has  always  done 
with  me  as  he  pleased;  but  he  's  a  dear  good  boy, 
I  'm  sure  he  's  a  dear  good  boy.  And  every  one 
thinks  him  very  attractive:  I  'm  sure  he  would  be 
noticed  anywhere.  Don't  you  think  he  's  very  hand 
some,  sir  ?  He  's  the  very  copy  of  his  poor  father. 
I  had  another  —  perhaps  you  have  been  told.  He 
was  awfully  killed."  And  the  poor  little  lady  smiled 
for  fear  of  doing  worse.  "He  was  a  very  fine  boy, 
but  very  different  from  Roderick.  Roderick  's  a  little 
strange  ;  he  has  never  been  an  easy  boy.  Sometimes 
I  feel  like  the  goose  —  wasn't  it  a  goose,  dear?" 

64 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and,  startled  by  the  audacity  of  her  comparison,  she 
appealed  to  Miss  Garland  — "  the  goose,  or  the 
hen,  who  hatched  a  swan's  egg.  I  Jve  never  been 
able  to  give  him  what  he  requires.  I  Ve  always 
thought  that  in  more  brilliant  circumstances  he 
might  find  his  place  and  be  happy.  But  at  the  same 
time  I  was  afraid  of  the  world  for  him;  it  was  so 
dangerous  and  dreadful  —  so  terribly  mixed.  No 
doubt  I  know  very  little  about  it.  I  never  suspected, 
I  confess,  that  it  contained  persons  of  such  liberality 
as  yours." 

Rowland  replied  that  evidently  she  had  done  the 
world  but  scanty  justice. 

"No,  she  always  does  justice,"  Miss  Garland  ob 
jected  after  a  pause.  "  It  's  this  that 's  so  much  like 
a  fairy-tale." 

"It  's  what,  pray?" 

"Why,  your  coming  here  all  unannounced,  un 
known,  so  rich  and  so  polite,  and  carrying  off  my 
cousin  in  a  golden  cloud." 

If  this  was  banter  Miss  Garland  had  the  best  of 
it,  for  Rowland  fairly  fell  a-musing  over  the  question 
of  its  perhaps  being  an  acid  meant  to  bite.  Before 
he  withdrew  Mrs.  Hudson  made  him  tell  her  again 
that  Roderick's  powers  were  probably  remarkable. 
He  had  inspired  her  with  a  clinging,  caressing  faith 
in  his  wisdom.  "He  will  really  do  beautiful  things  ?  " 
she  asked  —  "the  very  most  beautiful  ?" 

"I  see  no  intrinsic  reason  why  he  should  n't." 

"Well,  we  shall  think  of  that  as  we  sit  here  alone," 
she  rejoined.  "Mary  and  I  will  sit  here  and  talk 
about  it.  So  I  give  him  up,"  she  went  on  as  he  was 

6s 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

going.  "  I  'm  sure  you  '11  be  the  best  of  friends  to 
him;  but  if  you  should  ever  forget  him  or  grow 
tired  of  him,  if  you  should  lose  your  interest  in 
him  and  he  should  come  to  any  harm  or  any  trouble, 
please,  sir,  remember — "  And  she  paused  with  a 
tremulous  voice. 

"Remember,  my  dear  madam?" 

"That  he's  all  I  have  —  that  he's  everything  — 
and  that  it  would  be  very  terrible." 

"In  so  far  as  I  can  help  him  he  shall  succeed," 
was  all  Rowland  could  say.  He  turned  to  Miss 
Garland  to  bid  her  good-night,  and  she  rose  and 
put  out  her  hand.  She  was  very  straightforward, 
but  he  could  see  that  if  she  was  too  modest  to  be 
bold  she  was  much  too  simple  to  be  shy.  "  Have  you 
no  injunctions  to  give  me?"  he  asked  —  to  ask  her 
something. 

She  looked  at  him  hard,  and  then,  even  though 
she  was  not  shy,  she  blushed.  "Make  him  do  his 
best,"  she  said. 

Rowland  noted  the  full  tone,  the  ringing  depth 
of  voice  —  this  young  woman's  was  a  perfect  con 
tralto  —  with  which  the  words  were  uttered.  "  Do 
you  take  a  great  interest  in  him  ?" 

"The  greatest  interest." 

"Then  if  he  won't  do  his  best  for  you  he  won't  do 
it  for  me."  She  but  turned  away  in  silence  at  this, 
and  Rowland  took  his  leave. 

He  walked  homeward  thinking  of  many  things. 
The  great  Northampton  elms  interarched  far  above 
in  the  darkness,  but  the  moon  had  risen  and  through 
scattered  apertures  was  hanging  the  dusky  vault 

66 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

with  silver  lamps.  There  seemed  to  Rowland  some 
thing  solemn  in  the  scene  in  which  he  had  just 
taken  part.  He  had  laughed  and  talked  and  braved 
it  out  in  self-defence;  but  when  he  reflected  that 
he  was  really  meddling  with  the  simple  stillness  of 
this  small  New  England  home  and  that  he  had  ven 
tured  to  disturb  so  much  living  security  in  the  interest 
of  a  far-away  fantastic  hypothesis,  he  gasped,  amazed 
at  his  temerity.  It  was  true,  as  Cecilia  had  said, 
that  for  an  unofficious  man  it  was  a  singular  posi 
tion.  There  stirred  in  his  mind  an  odd  feeling  of 
annoyance  with  Roderick  for  having  so  peremptorily 
taken  possession  of  his  nature.  As  he  looked  up  and 
down  the  long  vista  and  saw  the  clear  white  houses 
glancing  here  and  there  in  the  broken  moonshine, 
he  could  almost  have  believed  that  the  happiest  lot 
for  any  man  was  to  make  the  most  of  life  in  some 
such  tranquil  spot  as  that.  Here  were  kindness, 
comfort,  safety,  the  warning  voice  of  duty,  the-  per 
fect  absence  of  temptation.  And  as  Rowland  looked 
along  the  arch  of  silvered  shadow  and  out  into  the 
lucid  air  of  the  American  night,  which  seemed  so 
doubly  vast,  somehow,  and  strange  and  nocturnal, 
he  was  moved  to  feel  that  here  was  beauty  too  — 
beauty  sufficient  for  an  artist  not  to  starve  upon  it. 
As  he  stood  there  lost  in  the  darkness  he  presently 
heard  a  rapid  tread  on  the  other  side  of  the  road, 
accompanied  by  a  loud  jubilant  whistle,  and  in  a 
moment  a  figure  emerged  into  an  open  gap  of  moon 
shine.  He  had  no  difficulty  in  recognising  his  young 
man,  who  was  presumably  returning  from  a  visit 
to  Cecilia.  Roderick  stopped  suddenly  and  stared 

67 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

up  at  the  moon,  his  face  vividly  illumined.  He  broke 
out  into  a  snatch  of  song  — 

'« The  splendour  falls  on  castle  walls 
And  snowy  summits  old  in  story! " 

And  with  a  great  musical  roll  of  his  voice  he  went 
swinging  off  into  the  darkness  again  as  if  his  thoughts 
had  lent  him  wings.  He  was  dreaming  of  the  in 
spiration  of  foreign  lands  —  of  mighty  monuments 
and  sacred  sites.  What  a  pity,  after  all,  thought 
Rowland  as  he  went  his  own  way,  that  he  should  n't 
have  a  "lick  "  at  them! 


IV 


IT  had  been  a  very  sage  remark  of  Cecilia's  that  Rod 
erick  would  change  with  a  change  in  his  circumstances. 
Rowland  had  telegraphed  to  New  York  for  another 
berth  on  his  steamer,  and  from  the  hour  the  an 
swer  came  that  youth's  spirits  rose  to  incalculable 
heights.  He  was  radiant  with  good-humour,  and 
his  charming  gaiety  the  evident  pledge  of  a  bril 
liant  future.  He  had  forgiven  his  old  enemies  and 
forgotten  his  old  grievances  —  he  seemed  in  every 
way  reconciled  to  a  world  in  which  he  was  going 
to  be  important  and  wonderful.  He  was  profusely 
jocose  and  suggestive,  and,  as  Cecilia  said,  he  had 
suddenly  become  so  good  that  he  might  have  been 
not  so  much  beginning  a  Roman  career  as  ending 
an  earthly  one.  He  took  long  walks  with  Rowland, 
who  felt  more  and  more  the  fascination  of  his  sur 
render  —  a  fascinated  one  too,  in  its  degree  —  to 
all  this  complacency.  Rowland  returned  several 
times  to  Mrs.  Hudson's  and  found  the  two  ladies 
doing  their  best  to  keep  in  tune  with  their  compan 
ion's  glee.  Mary  Garland,  he  thought,  was  succeed 
ing  better  than  her  demeanour  on  his  first  visit  had 
promised.  He  tried  to  have  some  undiverted  talk 
with  her,  but  her  extreme  reserve  forced  him  to 
content  himself  with  such  response  to  his  rather 
urgent  overtures  as  might  be  extracted  from  her 
leaving  him,  very  frankly,  all  the  consciousness  of 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

them.  It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  if  the 
response  was  vague,  the  satisfaction  he  drew  from 
her  mere  colourless  patience  was  great,  and  that 
after  his  second  visit  he  kept  seeing  the  element 
itself  reflected  in  the  most  unlikely  surfaces,  the 
most  unexpected  places.  It  seemed  strange  that 
she  should  interest  him  so  much  at  so  slender  a  cost; 
but  interest  him  she  did,  extraordinarily,  and  his 
interest  had  a  quality  altogether  new  to  him.  It 
made  him  restless  and  a  trifle  melancholy;  he  walked 
about  absently,  wondering  and  wishing.  Hewondered, 
among  other  things,  why  fate  should  have  condemned 
him  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  a  girl  whom  he 
would  make  a  sacrifice  to  know  better,  just  as  he 
was  leaving  the  country  for  years.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  he  was  turning  his  back  on  a  chance  of  happi 
ness  —  happiness  of  a  sort  of  which  the  slenderest 
germ  should  be  cultivated.  He  asked  himself  whether, 
feeling  as  he  did,  if  he  had  only  himself  to  please, 
he  would  have  given  up  his  start  and  hung  about. 
He  had  Roderick  to  please  now,  for  whom  disap 
pointment  would  be  cruel;  but  he  took  it  for  pre 
sumable  that  had  there  been  no  Roderick  in  the 
case  the  ship  would  be  sailing  without  him.  He 
asked  the  young  man  several  questions  about  his 
cousin,  but  Roderick,  throwing  discretion  to  the 
winds  on  so  many  points,  seemed  to  have  reasons 
of  his  own  for  being  reticent  on  this  one.  His  meas 
ured  answers  quickened  Rowland's  curiosity,  for  the 
girl,  with  her  irritating  half-suggestions,  had  only 
to  be  a  subject  of  guarded  allusion  in  others  to  be 
come  a  secret  obsession.  He  learned  from  Roderick 

70 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

that  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  country  minister,  a 
far-away  cousin  of  his  mother,  settled  in  another 
part  of  the  state;  that  she  was  one  of  half  a  dozen 
daughters,  that  the  family  had  scant  means,  and  that 
she  had  come  a  couple  of  months  before  to  pay  his 
mother  a  long  visit.  "  It 's  to  be  a  very  long  one 
now,"  he  said,  "for  it's  settled  that  she  remains 
while  I  'm  away." 

The  fermentation  of  beatitude  in  Roderick's 
soul  reached  its  climax  a  few  days  before  the  young 
men  were  to  make  their  farewells.  He  had  been 
sitting  with  his  friends  on  Cecilia's  verandah,  but  for 
half  an  hour  past  he  had  said  nothing.  Lounging 
back  against  a  column  muffled  in  creepers  and  gazing 
idly  at  the  stars,  he  kept  chanting  softly  and  with 
that  indifference  to  ceremony  for  which  he  always 
found  allowance,  though  it  had  nothing  conciliatory 
but  what  his  good  looks  gave  it.  At  last,  springing 
up,  "I  want  to  strike  out  hard!"  he  exclaimed; 
"I  want  to  do  something  violent  and  indecent  and 
impossible  —  to  let  off  steam!" 

"  I  '11  tell  you  what  to  do,  this  lovely  weather," 
Cecilia  said.  "Give  a  picnic.  It  can  be  as  violent, 
it  can  be  even  as  indecent,  as  you  like,  and  it  will 
have  the  merit  of  leading  off  our  hysterics  into  a  safe 
channel,  as  well  as  yours." 

Roderick  accepted  with  all  affability  her  very 
practical  remedy  for  his  nervous  need,  and  a  couple 
of  days  later  the  picnic  was  given.  It  was  to  be  a 
family  party,  but  Roderick,  in  his  magnanimous 
geniality,  insisted  on  inviting  Mr.  Striker,  a  decision 
which  Rowland  still  more  genially  applauded.  "  And 

7*. 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

we'll  have  Mrs.  Striker  too,"  he  said,  "if  she'll 
come,  to  keep  my  mother  in  countenance;  and  at 
any  rate  we  '11  have  Miss  Striker  —  the  divine 
Petronilla!"  The  young  lady  thus  denominated 
formed,  with  Mrs.  Hudson,  Miss  Garland  and  Cecilia, 
the  better  part  of  the  female  contingent.  Mr.  Striker 
presented  himself,  sacrificing  a  morning's  work, 
with  a  magnanimity  greater  even  than  Roderick's, 
and  foreign  support  was  further  secured  in  the  person 
of  Mr.  Whitefoot,  the  young  Orthodox  minister. 
Roderick  had  chosen  his  happy  valley,  the  feasting- 
place;  he  knew  it  well  and  had  passed  many  a 
summer  afternoon  there,  lying  at  his  length  on  the 
grass  in  the  shade  and  looking  away  to  the  blue 
distances,  the  "purple  rim"  of  the  poet,  which 
had  the  wealth  of  the  world,  all  the  unattainable 
of  life,  beyond  them.  A  high-hung  meadow  stretched 
on  one  side  to  a  peculiarly  dark  wood,  in  which  he 
used  to  say  there  were  strange  beasts  and  "mon 
sters,"  who  could  n't  come  out,  but  who  put  it  out 
of  the  question  that  one  should  go  in ;  and  the 
meadow  had  high  mossy  rocks  protruding  through 
its  grass  and  formed  in  the  opposite  direction  the 
shore  of  a  small  lake.  It  was  a  cloudless  August 
day;  Rowland  always  remembered  it,  and  the  scene 
and  everything  that  was  said  and  done,  with  ex 
traordinary  distinctness.  Roderick  surpassed  him 
self  in  friendly  jollity,  and  at  one  moment,  when 
exhilaration  was  at  the  highest,  was  seen  in  Mr. 
Striker's  high  white  hat,  drinking  champagne  from 
a  broken  tea-cup  to  Mr.  Striker's  health.  Miss 
Striker  had  her  father's  light  green  eyes  and  almost 

72 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  tendency  to  close  one  of  them  at  a  time  for  em 
phasis;  she  was  dressed  as  if  to  sit  for  her  photo 
graph  and  remained  for  a  long  time  with  Roderick 
on  a  little  promontory  overhanging  the  lake.  Mrs. 
Hudson  kept  all  day  a  little  meek  apprehensive  smile. 
She  was  afraid  of  an  "accident,"  though  unless 
Miss  Striker  (who  indeed  was  a  little  of  a  romp)  should 
push  Roderick  into  the  lake  it  was  hard  to  see  what 
accident  could  occur.  Mrs.  Hudson  was  as  neat  and 
crisp  and  uncrumpled  at  the  end  of  the  festival  as 
at  the  beginning.  Mr.  Whitefoot,  who  but  a  twelve 
month  later  became  a  convert  to  Episcopacy  and 
was  already  cultivating  a  certain  sonority  of  private 
discourse,  devoted  himself  to  Cecilia.  He  had  a 
little  book  in  his  pocket,  out  of  which  he  read  to 
her  at  intervals,  lying  stretched  at  her  feet;  and  it 
was  a  lasting  joke  with  Cecilia  afterwards  that  she 
would  never  tell  what  Mr.  Whitefoot's  little  book 
had  been.  Rowland  had  placed  himself  near  Miss 
Garland  while  the  feasting  went  forward  on  the  grass. 
She  wore  a  so-called  gypsy  hat  —  a  little  straw  hat 
tied  down  over  her  ears,  so  as  to  cast  her  eyes  into 
shadow,  by  a  ribbon  passing  outside  of  it.  When 
the  company  dispersed  after  lunch  he  proposed  to 
her  to  take,  in  spite  of  Roderick's  beasts  and  mon 
sters,  a  stroll  in  the  wood.  She  hesitated  a  moment 
and  looked  at  Mrs.  Hudson  as  if  for  permission  to 
leave  her.  But  Mrs.  Hudson  was  listening  to  Mr. 
Striker,  who  sat  gossiping  to  her  with  relaxed  con 
sistency,  his  waistcoat  unbuttoned  and  his  hat  on  his 
nose. 

"You  can  give  your  cousin  your  society  at  any 

73 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

time,"  said  Rowland.  "  But  me  perhaps  you  Tll 
never  see  again." 

"Why  then  should  we  attempt  to  be  friends,  if 
nothing  is  to  come  of  it  ?"  she  asked  with  homely 
logic.  But  by  this  time  she  had  consented  and  they 
were  treading  the  fallen  pine-needles. 

"Oh,  one  must  take  all  one  can  get,"  said  Row 
land.  "  If  we  can  be  friends  for  half  an  hour  it 's 
so  much  gained." 

"Do  you  expect  never  to  come  back  to  North 
ampton  again  ?"  she  went  on  with  detachment. 

"'Never'  is  a  good  deal  to  say.  But  I  go  to  Europe 
for  a  long  stay." 

"Do  you  prefer  that  country  so  much  to  this?" 

"I  won't  say  that  my  preferences  and  reasons 
are  all  on  one  side.  But  I  have  the  misfortune  to 
be  rather  an  idle  man,  and  in  Europe  both  the  bur 
den  and  the  obloquy  of  idleness  are  less  heavy  than 
here." 

She  was  silent  for  a  few  minutes;  then  at  last, 
"In  that  surely  we  are  better  than  Europe,"  she 
said.  To  a  certain  point  Rowland  agreed  with  her, 
but  he  demurred,  to  make  her  say  more.  "Would  n't 
it  be  better,"  she  accordingly  asked,  "to  set  at  some 
work  in  order  to  get  reconciled  to  America  than  to 
go  to  Europe  just  in  order  to  get  reconciled  to 
sloth  ? " 

"Doubtless,  but  you  know  work  doesn't  come 
to  every  one's  hand." 

"I  come  from  a  little  place  where  it  just  does  do 
that,"  said  Mary  Garland.  "We  all  work;  every 
one  I  know  works.  And  really,"  she  added  pre- 
74 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sently,  "I  look   at  you  with  curiosity:   you're  the 
first  unoccupied  man  I  ever  saw." 

"Don't  look  at  me  too  hard,"  Rowland  laughed. 
"  I  shall  sink  into  the  earth.  What 's  the  name  of 
your  little  place  ?" 

"West  Nazareth,"  said  Mary  Garland  with  her 
usual  directness.  "  It 's  not  so  terribly  small,  though 
it  's  smaller  than  Northampton." 

"I  wonder  whether  I  could  find  any  work  at 
West  Nazareth,"  Rowland  said. 

"You  would  n't  like  it  very  much,"  Miss  Garland 
declared  reflectively.  "Though  there  are  far  finer 
woods  there  than  these.  We  have  miles  and  miles  of 
woods." 

"I  might  chop  down  trees,"  said  Rowland.  "That 
is  if  you  allow  it." 

"Allow  it?  Why,  where  should  we  get  our  fire 
wood  ?"  Then  noticing  that  he  had  spoken  jest 
ingly  she  glanced  at  him  askance,  though  with  no 
visible  diminution  of  her  gravity.  "  Don't  you  know 
how  to  do  anything  at  all  ?  Have  you  no  sort  of  pro 
fession  ?" 

Rowland  shook  his  head.    "Absolutely  none." 

"What  do  you  then  do  all  day  ?" 

"Nothing  that  would  make  a  figure  in  a  descrip 
tion.  That's  why,  as  I  tell  you,  I'm  going  to  Europe. 
There  at  least  if  I  do  nothing  I  shall  see  a  great  deal; 
and  if  I  'm  not  a  producer  I  shall  at  any  rate  be  an 
observer." 

"Can't  we  observe  everywhere  ?" 

"Certainly;  and  I  really  think  that  in  that  way 
I  make  the  most  of  my  opportunities.  Though  I  con- 

75 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

fess,"  he  continued,  "that  I  often  remember  there 
are  things  to  be  seen  here  to  which  I  probably 
have  not  done  justice.  I  should  like  for  instance 
to  see  West  Nazareth." 

She  looked  round  at  him,  open-eyed;  not  ap 
parently  that  she  exactly  supposed  he  was  jesting, 
for  the  expression  of  such  a  desire  was  not  neces 
sarily  facetious;  but  as  if  he  must  have  spoken 
with  an  ulterior  motive.  He  had  spoken  in  fact 
from  the  simplest  of  motives.  The  girl  beside  him 
appealed,  strangely,  to  his  sense  of  character,  and 
even,  in  her  way,  to  his  sense  of  beauty,  and,  satis 
fied  that  her  quality  would  be  very  much  her  own, 
and  neither  borrowed  nor  reflected  nor  imposed, 
he  wished,  positively  as  a  help  for  liking  her  better, 
to  make  her  show  him  how  little  her  situation  had 
had  to  give  her.  Her  second  movement  now  was  to 
take  him  at  his  word.  "Since  you're  free  to  do  as 
you  please,  why  don't  you  go  there  ?" 

"I  'm  not  free  to  do  as  I  please  now.  I  've  offered 
your  cousin  to  bear  him  company  to  Europe,  he 
has  accepted  with  enthusiasm,  and  I  can't  back  out." 

"Are  you  going  to  Europe  simply  for  his  sake  ?" 

Rowland  hesitated.  "I  think  I  may  almost  say 
so." 

Mary  Garland  walked  along  in  silence.  "Do 
you  mean  to  do  a  great  deal  for  him?"  she  asked 
at  last. 

"What  I  can.  But  my  power  of  helping  him  is 
very  small  beside  his  power  of  helping  himself." 

For  a  moment  she  w?s  silent  again.  "You  're 
very  generous,"  she  then  simply  said. 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"No,  I  'm  principally  very  shrewd.  Roderick 
will  repay  me.  It's  a  speculation.  At  first,  I  think," 
he  added  shortly  afterwards,  "you  wouldn't  have 
paid  me  that  little  compliment.  You  didn't  believe 
in  me." 

She  made  no  attempt  to  deny  it.  "  I  did  n't  see 
why  you  should  wish  to  make  Roderick  discontented. 
I  thought  you  were  rather  frivolous." 

"You  did  me  injustice.     I  don't  think  I'm  that." 

"  It  was  because  you  're  unlike  other  men  —  those 
at  least  whom  I  've  seen." 

"In  what  way  ?" 

"Why,  as  you  describe  yourself.  You  have  no 
duties,  no  profession,  no  home.  You  live  for  your 
pleasure." 

"That 's  all  very  true.  And  yet  I  maintain  I  strike 
myself  as  not  frivolous." 

"I  hope  not,"  she  said  quietly.  They  had  reached 
a  point  where  the  wood-path  forked  and  put  forth 
two  divergent  tracks  which  appeared  to  lose  them 
selves,  at  no  great  distance,  in  a  tangle  of  under 
growth.  The  young  girl  seemed  to  think  the  diffi 
culty  of  choice  between  them  a  reason  for  giving  them 
up  and  turning  back,  but  Rowland  thought  other 
wise  and  detected  agreeable  grounds  for  preference 
in  the  left-hand  path.  As  a  compromise  they  sat 
down  on  a  fallen  log.  Looking  about  him,  Rowland 
espied  a  curious  wild  shrub  with  a  spotted  crimson 
leaf;  he  went  and  plucked  a  spray  of  it  and  brought 
it  to  his  companion.  He  had  never  observed  it  before, 
but  she  immediately  called  it  by  its  name.  She  ex 
pressed  surprise  at  his  not  knowing  it;  it  was  ex- 

77 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tremely  common.  He  presently  brought  her  a  speci 
men  of  another  delicate  plant,  with  a  little  blue- 
streaked  flower.  "  I  suppose  that 's  common  too," 
he  said,  "  but  I  Ve  never  seen  it  —  or  noticed  it 
at  least."  She  answered  that  this  one  was  rare, 
and  cast  about  a  little  before  she  could  recall  its 
name.  At  last  she  remembered,  expressing  her 
surprise  at  his  having  found  the  plant  in  the  woods; 
she  supposed  it  grew  only  in  the  marshes.  Row 
land  complimented  her  on  her  fund  of  useful  in 
formation. 

"It  's  not  especially  useful,"  she  answered;  "but 
I  like  to  know  the  names  of  plants  as  I  do  those 
of  my  acquaintances.  When  we  walk  in  the  woods 
at  home  —  which  we  do  so  much  —  it  seems  as 
unnatural  not  to  know  what  to  call  the  flowers  as 
it  would  be  to  see  some  one  in  the  town  with  whom 
we  should  n't  be  on  speaking  terms." 

"  If  there  's  a  question  of  frivolity,"  Rowland  said, 
"  I  'm  sure  you  yourself  have  very  little  of  it,  unless 
at  West  Nazareth  it 's  considered  frivolous  to  walk 
in  the  woods  and  nod  to  the  nodding  flowers.  Do 
kindly  tell  me  a  little  about  yourself."  And  to 
compel  her  to  begin,  "  I  know  you  come  of  a  race  of 
theologians,"  he  went  on. 

"No,"  she  replied,  deliberating;  "they're  not 
theologians,  though  they're  ministers.  We  don't 
take  a  very  firm  stand  upon  doctrine;  we  're  prac 
tical  and  active  rather ;  we  have  n't  time  to  find 
reasons  and  phrases.  We  write  sermons  and  preach 
them,  but  we  do  a  great  deal  of  hard  work  be 
sides." 

78 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"And  of  this  hard  work  what  has  your  share  been  ?" 

"The  hardest  part  —  not  doing  anything." 

"What  do  you  call  doing  nothing  ?" 

"I  taught  some  small  children  their  lessons  once; 
I  must  make  the  most  of  that.  But  I  confess  I  did  n't 
like  it.  Otherwise  I  've  only  done  little  things  at 
home  as  they  turned  up." 

"What  kind  of  things?" 

"Oh,  every  kind.  If  you  had  seen  my  home  you 
would  understand." 

Rowland  would  have  liked  to  make  her  specify; 
but  he  took  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  being  felt  as 
discreet.  "To  be  happy,  I  imagine,"  he  contented 
himself  with  saying,  "you  need  to  see  results  — 
those  of  your  service,  of  your  ability.  You  need 
somebody  or  something  to  expend  yourself  upon." 

"That 's  not  so  true  as  it  once  was;  now  that  I  'm 
older  I  've  developed  a  turn  for  sitting  about  quite 
shamelessly.  Certainly  these  two  months  that  I  've 
been  with  Mrs.  Hudson  I  've  done  little  else.  And 
yet  I  've  enjoyed  it.  And  now  that  I  'm  probably 
to  be  with  her  all  the  while  that  her  son  's  away, 
I  look  forward  to  more  with  dreadful  resignation." 

"It's  quite  settled  then  that  you're  to  remain 
with  your  cousin  ?  " 

"It  depends  upon  their  writing  from  home  that 
I  may  stay.  But  that 's  probable.  Only  I  must  not 
forget,"  she  said,  rising,  "that  the  ground  for  my 
doing  so  is  that  she  shall  not  be  left  alone." 

"I'm  glad  to  know  that  I  shall  probably  often 
hear  about  you.  I  assure  you  I  shall  often  wonder 
about  you!"  These  slightly  breathless  words  of  Row- 

79 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

land's  were  half  precipitation  and  half  prudence. 
They  were  the  simple  truth,  and  he  had  asked  him 
self  why  he  should  not  tell  her  the  truth.  And  yet 
they  were  not  all  of  it;  her  hearing  the  rest  would 
depend  upon  the  way  she  received  this  instalment. 
She  received  it  not  only,  as  he  had  foreseen,  with 
out  the  sign  of  a  flutter  or  a  thought  of  conscious  grace, 
but  with  a  slight  movement  of  nervous  deprecation 
which  seemed  to  betray  itself  in  the  quickening  of 
her  step.  Evidently  if  he  was  to  take  pleasure  in 
hearing  about  her  it  would  have  to  be  a  satisfac 
tion  highly  disinterested.  She  answered  nothing, 
and  Rowland  too,  as  he  walked  beside  her,  was 
silent;  but  as  he  looked  along  the  shadow-woven 
wood-path  what  he  was  really  facing  was  three 
interminable  years  of  disinterestedness.  He  ushered 
them  in  by  talking  composed  civility  until  he  had 
brought  Miss  Garland  back  to  her  companions. 

He  saw  her  but  once  again.  He  was  obliged  to 
be  in  New  York  a  couple  of  days  before  sailing, 
and  it  was  arranged  that  Roderick  should  overtake 
him  at  the  last  moment.  The  evening  before  he 
left  Northampton  he  went  to  say  farewell  to  Mrs. 
Hudson.  The  ceremony  was  brief.  He  soon  per 
ceived  that  the  poor  little  lady  was  in  the  melting 
mood,  and  as  he  dreaded  her  tears  he  compressed 
a  multitude  of  solemn  promises  into  a  silent  hand 
shake  and  took  his  leave.  Mary  Garland,  she  had 
told  him,  was  in  the  back  garden  with  Roderick; 
he  might  go  out  to  them.  He  did  so,  and  as  he  drew 
near  he  heard  Roderick's  high-pitched  voice  ring 
ing  behind  the  shrubbery.  In  a  moment,  emerg- 

80 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ing,  he  found  the  girl  leaning  against  a  tree  while 
her  cousin  stood  before  her  and  talked  with  great 
emphasis.  He  asked  pardon  for  interrupting  them 
and  said  he  wished  only  to  bid  her  good-bye.  She 
gave  him  her  hand,  and  he  held  it  an  instant  without 
a  word.  "Don't  forget,"  he  said  to  Roderick  as 
he  turned  away.  "And  don't,  in  this  company, 
repent  of  your  bargain." 

"I  shall  not  let  him,"  said  Mary  Garland,  with 
a  nearer  approach  to  reckless  cheer  than  he  had 
yet  heard  on  her  lips.  "I  shall  see  that  he  's  punctual. 
He  must  go!  I  owe  you  an  apology  for  having 
doubted  that  he  ought  to  go!"  And  her  face,  in  the 
summer  dusk,  was  new  and  vague  and  handsome. 

Roderick  was  punctual,  eagerly  punctual,  and  they 
went.  Rowland  for  several  days  was  occupied 
with  material  cares  and  lost  sight  of  his  accepted 
obsession.  But  the  questions  lurking  in  it  only 
slumbered  and  they  were  sharply  shaken  up.  The 
weather  was  fine,  and  the  two  young  men  always 
sat  together  upon  deck  late  into  the  evening.  One 
night,  towards  the  last,  they  were  at  the  stern  of 
the  great  ship,  watching  her  grind  the  solid  black 
ness  of  the  ocean  into  phosphorescent  foam.  They 
talked  on  these  occasions  of  everything  conceivable 
and  had  the  air  of  having  no  secrets  from  each  other. 
But  it  was  on  Roderick's  conscience  that  this  air 
belied  him,  and  he  was  moreover  too  full  of  his 
native  claims  for  any  permanent  reticence. 

"I  must  tell  you  something,"  he  broke  out  at 
last.  "I  should  like  you  to  know  it,  and  you'll  be 
so  glad  to  know  it.  Besides,  it 's  only  a  question  of 

81 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

time;  three  months  hence  probably  you  would  have 
guessed  it.  I  'm  engaged  to  marry  Mary  Garland." 

Rowland  sat  staring;  though  the  sea  was  calm 
it  seemed  to  him  that  the  ship  gave  a  great  dizzying 
lurch.  But  in  a  moment  he  contrived  to  answer 
coherently.  "Engaged  to  marry  her!  I  never  sup 
posed  —  I  never  imagined  —  !  " 

"That  I  was  in  love  with  her?"  Roderick  inter 
rupted.  "Neither  did  I  before  this  last  fortnight. 
But  you  came  and  put  me  into  such  ridiculous  good- 
humour  that  I  felt  an  extraordinary  desire  to  spill 
over  to  some  woman,  and  I  suppose  I  took  the  near 
est.  Really  I  may  say  the  dearest  too,  for  Mary  's 
a  dear;  you  know  her  too  little  to  do  her  justice. 
I  myself  have  only  been  learning  to  know  her  from 
three  months  ago,  and  have  been  falling  in  love  with 
her  without  suspecting  it.  It  appeared  when  I  spoke 
to  her  that  she  thought  distinctly  better  of  me  than 
I  supposed.  So  the  thing  was  settled.  I  must  of 
course  make  lots  of  money  before  'we  can  marry, 
and  it's  rather  awkward,  certainly,  to  engage  one's 
self  to  a  girl  whom  one  is  going  to  leave  for  years 
the  next  day.  We  shall  be  condemned  for  some  time 
to  come  to  do  a  terrible  deal  of  abstract  thinking 
about  each  other.  But  I  wanted  her  blessing  and 
I  couldn't  help  asking  for  it.  Unless  a  man's  un 
naturally  selfish  he  needs  to  work  for  some  one 
else  than  himself,  and  I  'm  sure  I  shall  run  a  smoother 
and  swifter  course  for  knowing  that  there  's  a  per 
son  so  good  and  clever  and  charming,  to  whom  my 
success  will  make  the  grand  difference,  waiting  at 
Northampton  for  news  of  my  greatness.  If  ever  I  'm 

82 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

a  dull  companion  and  over-addicted  to  moping, 
remember  in  justice  to  me  that  I  'm  in  love  and 
that  the  loved  object  is  five  thousand  miles  away." 

Rowland  listened  to  all  this  with  a  feeling  that 
fortune  had  played  him  an  elaborately  devised 
trick.  It  had  lured  him  out  into  mid-ocean  and 
smoothed  the  sea  and  stilled  the  winds  and  given 
him  a  singularly  sympathetic  comrade,  and  then  it 
had  turned  and  delivered  him  a  thumping  blow  in 
mid-chest.  "Yes,"  he  said  after  an  attempt  at  the 
usual  formal  congratulation,  "you  certainly  ought 
to  do  better  —  with  Miss  Garland  waiting  for  you 
at  Northampton!" 

Roderick,  now  that  he  had  broken  ground,  was 
vivid,  was  natural,  was  delightful,  and  rang  a  hun 
dred  changes  on  the  assurance  that  he  was  a  very 
happy  man.  Then  at  last,  suddenly,  his  climax 
was  a  yawn  and  he  declared  that  he  must  tumble  in. 
Rowland  let  him  go  alone  and  sat  there  late  between 
sea  and  sky. 


ONE  warm,  still  day,  late  in  the  Roman  autumn,  our 
two  young  men  were  seated  beneath  one  of  the 
high-stemmed  pines  of  the  Villa  Ludovisi.  They 
had  been  spending  an  hour  in  the  mouldy  little 
garden-house  where  the  colossal  mask  of  the  famous 
Juno  looks  out  with  blank  eyes  from  that  dusky 
corner  which  must  seem  to  her  the  last  possible 
stage  of  a  lapse  from  Olympus.  Then  they  had 
wandered  out  into  the  gardens  and  were  lounging 
away  the  morning  under  the  spell,  as  it  seemed  to 
them,  of  supreme  romance.  Roderick  declared 
that  he  would  go  nowhere  else,  that  after  the  Juno 
it  was  a  profanation  to  look  at  anything  but  sky 
and  trees.  There  was  a  fresco  of  Guercino,  to  which 
Rowland,  though  he  had  seen  it  on  his  former  visit 
to  Rome,  went  dutifully  to  pay  his  respects.  But 
Roderick,  though  he  had  never  seen  it,  declared 
that  it  couldn't  be  worth  a  fig  and  that  he  didn't 
care  to  look  at  ugly  things.  He  remained  stretched 
on  his  overcoat,  which  he  had  spread  on  the  grass, 
while  Rowland  went  off  envying  the  intellectual 
comfort  of  genius,  which  can  arrive  at  serene  con 
clusions  without  disagreeable  processes.  When  the 
latter  came  back  his  friend  was  sitting  with  his 
elbows  on  his  knees  and  his  head  in  his  hands. 
Rowland,  in  the  geniality  of  a  mood  attuned  to  all 
the  stored  patiences  that  lurk  in  Roman  survivals, 

84 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

found  a  good  word  to  say  for  the  Guercino;  but 
chiefly  he  talked  of  the  view  from  the  little  belve 
dere  on  the  roof  of  the  casino,  and  how  it  looked 
like  the  prospect  from  a  castle  turret  in  a  fairy-tale. 

"Very  likely,"  said  Roderick,  throwing  himself 
back  with  a  yawn.  "But  I  must  let  it  pass.  I've 
seen  enough  for  the  present ;  I  've  reached  the 
top  of  the  hill.  I  've  an  indigestion  of  impressions; 
I  must  work  them  off  before  I  go  in  for  any  more. 
I  don't  want  to  look  at  any  more  of  other  people's 
works  for  a  month  —  not  even  at  nature's  own.  I 
want  to  look,  if  you  please,  at  Roderick  Hudson's.  The 
result  of  it  all  is  that  I  'm  not  afraid.  I  can  but  try 
as  well  as  the  rest  of  them.  The  fellow  who  did  that 
gazing  goddess  yonder  only  made  an  experiment. 
The  other  day  when  I  was  looking  at  Michael 
Angelo's  Moses  I  was  seized  with  a  kind  of  exas 
peration,  a  reaction  against  all  this  mere  passive 
enjoyment  of  grandeur,  and,  above  all,  against 
this  perpetual  platitude  of  spirit  under  imposed 
admirations.  It  was  a  rousing  great  success,  cer 
tainly,  that  sat  there  before  me,  but  somehow  it 
was  n't  an  inscrutable  mystery,  and  it  seemed  to 
me,  not  perhaps  that  I  should  some  day  do  as  much, 
but  that  at  least  I  might  do  as  well." 

"As  you  say,  you  can  but  try,"  said  Rowland. 
"Achievement's  only  effort  passionate  enough." 

"Well  then,  haven't  I  got  up  steam  enough  ?  It 
won't  have  been  for  want  of  your  being  a  first-class 
stoker.  It  came  over  me  just  now  that  it 's  exactly 
three  months  to  a  day  since  I  left  Northampton.  I 
can't  believe  anything  so  ridiculous." 

85 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"It  certainly  seems  more." 

"It  seems  ten  years.  What  an  exquisite  ass  I  was 
so  short  a  time  ago!" 

"Do  you  feel,"  Rowland  asked  all  amusedly,  "so 
tremendously  wise  now  ? " 

"Wise  with  the  wisdom  of  the  ages  and  the  taste 
of  a  thousand  fountains.  Don't  I  look  so  ?  Surely 
I  have  n't  the  same  face.  Have  n't  I  different  eyes, 
a  different  skin,  different  legs  and  arms  ? " 

"I  can  hardly  say,  because  I've  been  too  near 
you  to  catch  the  moments  of  change.  But  it 's  very 
likely.  You're,  in  the  literal  sense  of  the  word, 
more  civilised.  I  dare  say,"  added  Rowland,  "that 
Miss  Garland  would  think  so." 

"That's  not  what  she  would  call  it;  she  would 
say  I'm  spoiled;  I'm  not  sure  she  wouldn't  say 
that  I'm  already  hideously  corrupted." 

Rowland  asked  few  questions  about  Mary  Gar 
land,  but  he  always  listened  narrowly  to  his  com 
panion's  voluntary  observations.  "Are  you  very 
sure?" 

"Why,  she's  a  stern  moralist,  and  she  would 
infer  from  my  appearance  that  I  had  become  a 
gilded  profligate."  Roderick  had  in  fact  a  Venetian 
watch-chain  round  his  neck  and  a  magnificent  Ro 
man  intaglio  on  the  third  finger  of  his  left  hand. 

"Shall  you  feel  I  take  a  liberty,"  said  his  com 
panion,  "  if  I  tell  you  I  don't  think  you  quite  see  her 
all  round." 

"For  heaven's  sake,"  cried  Roderick,  laughing, 
"don't  tell  me  she's  not  a  moralist!  It  was  for  that 
I  fell  in  love  with  her  —  and  with  security  and  sanity, 

86 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

all  the  '  saving  clauses,'  in  her  sweet,  fresh  per 
son." 

"No  woman  who  cares"  his  friend  lucidly  re 
turned,  "is  ever  more  of  a  moralist  than  she  is  of 
a  partisan.  If  she  becomes  that,  it 's  a  sign  she  has 
ceased  to  care.  I  don't  know  whether  I  ever  men 
tioned  it,"  Rowland  went  on,  "but  I  made  out  to 
my  satisfaction  all  sorts  of  fine  free  things  in  Miss 
Garland.  There  's  nothing  at  all  scanted  about  her 
but  her  experience;  everything  else  is  large.  My 
conviction  of  her  is  that  she  's  very  intelligent,  but 
that  she  has  never  had  a  chance  to  prove  it.  Some 
day  or  other  I  'm  sure  she  '11  be  right  about  every 
thing." 

"Right  about  everything!"  Roderick  cried  in 
derision;  "what  a  horrible  description  of  one's 
future  bride!  I  don't  ask  you  to  be  a  better  Cath 
olic  than  the  Pope.  I  shall  be  content  if  she's  right 
about  my  interests  —  for  *  everything,'  sometimes, 
may  happen  to  be  hostile  to  them.  But  I  agree  with 
you  about  her  turn  for  grim  devotion.  It 's  exactly 
what  I  built  on,  and,  changed  as  I  am,  I  'm  not 
changed  about  her.  What  becomes  of  all  our  emo 
tions,  our  impressions,"  he  pursued  after  a  long 
pause,  "  all  the  material  of  thought  that  life  pours 
into  us  at  such  a  rate  during  such  a  memorable  three 
months  as  these  ?  There  are  twenty  moments  a 
week  —  a  day,  for  that  matter,  some  days  —  that 
seem  supreme,  twenty  impressions  that  seem  ulti 
mate,  that  appear  to  form  an  intellectual  era.  But 
others  come  treading  on  their  heels  and  sweeping 
them  along,  and  they  all  melt  like  water  into  water 

87 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  settle  the  question  of  precedence  among  them 
selves.  The  curious  thing  is  that  the  more  the  mind 
takes  in,  the  more  it  has  space  for,  and  that  all  one's 
ideas  are  like  the  Irish  people  at  home  who  live  in 
the  different  corners  of  a  room  and  take  boarders." 

"I  fancy  it 's  our  peculiar  good  luck  that  we  don't 
see  the  limits  of  our  minds,"  said  Rowland.  "We  're 
young,  compared  with  what  we  may  one  day  be. 
That  belongs  to  youth;  it's  perhaps  the  best  part 
of  it.  They  say  that  old  people  do  find  themselves 
at  last  face  to  face  with  a  solid  blank  wall  and  stand 
thumping  against  it  in  vain.  It  resounds,  it  seems 
to  have  something  beyond  it,  but  it  won't  move. 
That 's  only  a  reason  for  living  with  open  doors  as 
long  as  we  can." 

"Open  doors?"  Roderick  sounded.  "Yes,  let  us 
close  no  doors  that  open  upon  Rome.  For  this, 
for  the  mind,  must  be  the  most  breatheable  air 
in  the  world  —  it  gives  a  new  sense  to  the  old  Pax 
Romana.  But  though  my  doors  may  stand  open 
to-day,"  he  presently  added,  "I  shall  see  no  visitors. 
I  want  to  pause  and  breathe;  I  want  to  give  the 
desired  vision  a  chance  to  descend.  I  've  been  work 
ing  hard  for  three  months;  now  let  my  genius  do  the 
rest  —  the  grand  genius  of  me!" 

Rowland,  on  his  side,  was  not  without  provision 
for  reflexion,  and  they  lingered  on  in  gentle  desul 
tory  gossip.  Rowland  himself  felt  the  need  of  intel 
lectual  rest,  of  a  truce  to  present  care  for  churches, 
statues  and  pictures,  on  even  better  grounds  than 
his  companion,  inasmuch  as  he  had  really  been 
living  Roderick's  intellectual  life  the  past  three 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

months  as  well  as  his  own.  As  he  looked  back  on 
these  animated  weeks  he  drew  a  long  breath  of  satis 
faction  —  almost  as  of  relieved  suspense.  Roderick 
so  far  had  justified  his  confidence  and  flattered  his 
perspicacity;  he  was  giving  a  splendid  account  of 
himself.  He  was  changed  even  more  than  he  him 
self  suspected;  he  had  stepped  without  faltering 
into  his  birthright,  and  was  spending  money,  in 
tellectually,  with  the  freedom  of  a  young  heir  who 
has  just  won  an  obstructive  lawsuit.  His  eyes  still 
rolled  and  his  voice  quavered,  doubtless,  quite 
as  when  they  had  enlivened  the  summer  dusk  on 
Cecilia's  verandah;  but  in  his  person  generally 
there  was  an  indefinable  expression  of  experience 
rapidly  and  easily  assimilated.  Rowland  had  been 
struck  at  the  outset  with  the  instinctive  quickness 
of  his  observation  and  his  free  appropriation  of  what 
ever  might  serve  his  purpose.  He  had  not  been, 
for  instance,  half  an  hour  on  English  soil  before 
he  perceived  that  he  was  dressed  provincially,  and 
he  had  immediately  reformed  his  style  with  the 
most  unerring  tact.  His  appetite  for  novelty  waf 
insatiable,  and  for  everything  characteristically  for 
eign,  as  it  presented  itself,  he  had  an  extravagant 
greeting;  but  in  half  an  hour  the  novelty  had  faded, 
he  had  guessed  the  secret,  he  had  plucked  out 
the  heart  of  the  mystery  and  was  clamouring  for 
a  keener  sensation.  At  the  end  of  a  month  he  offered 
his  companion's  attention  a  riddle  that  took  some 
reading.  He  had  caught  instinctively  the  keynote 
of  the  general,  the  contrasted  European  order.  He 
observed  and  enjoyed,  he  criticised  and  rhapsodised, 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

but  though  all  things  interested  and  many  delighted 
him,  none  surprised  or  disconcerted;  he  invented 
short  cuts  and  was  all  ready  for  the  unexpected. 
Witnessing  the  rate  at  which  he  did  intellectual 
execution  on  the  general  spectacle  of  European 
life,  Rowland  felt  at  moments  a  vague  dismay  for 
his  future;  he  was  eating  his  cake  all  at  once  and 
might  have  none  left  for  the  morrow.  But  we  must 
live  as  our  pulses  are  timed,  and  Roderick's  struck 
the  hour  very  often.  He  was  by  imagination,  though 
he  never  became  in  manner,  a  natural  man  of  the 
world;  he  had  intuitively,  as  an  artist,  what  one 
may  call  the  historic  consciousness.  He  asked  Row 
land  questions  which  this  halting  dilettante  was 
quite  unable  to  answer,  and  of  which  he  was  equally 
unable  to  conceive  where  his  friend  had  picked 
up  the  data.  Roderick  ended  by  answering  them 
himself,  tolerably  to  his  satisfaction,  and  in  a  short 
time  he  had  almost  turned  the  tables  and  become 
in  their  walks  and  talks  the  accredited  fountain  of 
criticism.  Rowland  took  a  generous  pleasure  in  all 
these  facilities  and  felicities;  Roderick  was  so 
much  younger  than  he  himself  had  ever  been.  Surely 
youth  and  genius  hand  in  hand  were  the  most  beau 
tiful  sight  in  the  world.  Roderick  added  to  this 
the  charm  of  his  more  immediately  personal  qual 
ities.  The  vivacity  of  his  perceptions,  the  audacity 
of  his  imagination,  the  picturesqueness  of  his  phrase 
when  he  was  pleased  —  and  even  more  when  he  was 
displeased  —  his  abounding  good-humour,  his  can 
dour,  his  unclouded  frankness,  his  unfailing  impulse 
to  share  with  his  friend  every  emotion  and  impres- 

90 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sion;  all  this  made  comradeship  a  high,  rare  com 
munion  and  interfused  with  a  deeper  amenity  the 
wanderings  and  contemplations  that  beguiled  their 
pilgrimage  to  Rome. 

They  had  gone  almost  immediately  to  Paris 
and  had  spent  their  days  at  the  Louvre  and  their 
evenings  at  the  theatre.  Roderick  was  divided  in 
mind  as  to  whether  Titian  or  Mademoiselle  Dela- 
porte  were  the  greater  artist.  They  had  come  down 
through  France  to  Genoa  and  Milan,  had  passed 
a  fortnight  in  Venice  and  another  in  Florence,  and 
had  now  been  a  month  in  Rome.  Roderick  had 
said  that  he  meant  to  spend  three  months  in  simply 
looking,  absorbing  and  reflecting,  without  putting 
pencil  to  paper.  He  looked  indefatigably,  and 
certainly  saw  great  things  —  things  greater  doubt 
less  at  times  than  the  intention  of  the  artist.  And 
yet  he  made  few  false  steps  and  wasted  little  time 
in  theories  of  what  he  ought  to  like  and  to  dislike. 
He  judged  instinctively  and  passionately,  but  never 
vulgarly.  At  Venice  for  a  couple  of  days  he  had 
half  a  fit  of  melancholy  over  the  pretended  discovery 
that  he  had  missed  his  way  and  that  the  only  proper 
vestment  of  plastic  conceptions  was  the  colouring 
of  Titian  and  the  Veronese.  Then  one  morning  the 
two  young  men  had  themselves  rowed  out  to  Torcello, 
and  Roderick  lay  back  for  a  couple  of  hours  watch 
ing  a  brown-breasted  gondolier  make,  in  high  relief 
against  the  sky  of  the  Adriatic,  muscular  move 
ments  of  a  breadth  and  grace  that  he  had  never 
seen  equalled.  At  the  end  he  jerked  himself  up, 
with  a  violence  that  nearly  swamped  the  boat,  to 

91 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

declare  that  the  only  thing  worth  living  for  was  to 
build  a  colossal  bronze  and  set  it  aloft  in  the  light 
of  a  public  square.  In  Rome  his  first  care  was  for 
the  Vatican ;  he  went  there  again  and  again.  But 
the  old  imperial  and  papal  city  altogether  delighted 
him ;  only  there  he  really  found  what  he  had  been 
looking  for  from  the  first,  the  sufficient  negation 
of  his  native  scene.  And  indeed  Rome  is  the  nat 
ural  home  of  those  spirits  with  which  we  just  now 
claimed  fellowship  for  Roderick  —  the  spirits  with 
a  deep  relish  for  the  element  of  accumulation  in 
the  human  picture  and  for  the  infinite  superposi 
tions  of  history.  It  is  the  immemorial  city  of  con 
vention;  and  in  that  still  recent  day  the  most  im 
pressive  convention  in  all  history  was  visible  to 
men's  eyes  in  the  reverberating  streets,  erect  in  a 
gilded  coach  drawn  by  four  black  horses.  Roderick's 
first  fortnight  was  a  high  aesthetic  revel.  He  declared 
that  Rome  made  him  feel  and  understand  more 
things  than  he  could  express;  he  was  sure  that  life 
must  have  there  for  all  one's  senses  an  incompar 
able  fineness;  that  more  interesting  things  must 
happen  to  one  there  than  anywhere  else.  And  he 
gave  Rowland  to  understand  that  he  meant  to  live 

O 

freely  and  largely  and  be  as  interested  as  occasion 
demanded.  Rowland  saw  no  reason  to  regard  this 
as  a  menace  of  undue  surrender  to  the  senses,  be 
cause  in  the  first  place  there  was  in  almost  any 
crudity  of  "pleasure,"  refine  upon  it  as  the  imagin 
ation  might,  a  vulgar  side  which  would  disqualify 
it  for  Roderick's  favour;  and  because  in  the  second 
the  young  sculptor  was  a  man  to  regard  all  things 

92 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  the  light  of  his  art,  to  hand  over  his  passions  to 
his  genius  to  be  dealt  with,  and  to  find  that  he  could 
live  largely  enough,  even  quite  riotously  enough, 
without  exceeding  the  circle  of  pure  delights.  Row 
land  took  high  satisfaction  in  this  positive  law,  as 
he  saw  it,  of  his  companion's  spirit,  the  instinct  of 
investing  every  gain  of  sense  or  soul  in  the  enter 
prise  of  planned  production.  Production  indeed 
was  not  always  working  at  a  clay  model,  but  the 
form  it  sometimes  took  was  none  the  less  a  safe 
one.  He  wrote  frequent  long  letters  to  Mary  Gar 
land;  when  Rowland  went  with  him  to  post  them 
he  thought  wistfully  of  the  fortune  of  the  large 
loosely-written  missives,  which  cost  Roderick  un 
conscionable  sums  in  postage.  He  received  punctual 
answers  of  a  more  frugal  shape,  written  in  a  clear 
and  delicate  hand,  on  paper  vexatiously  thin.  If 
Rowland  was  present  when  they  came  he  turned 
away  and  thought  of  other  things  or  tried  to  think. 
These  were  the  only  moments  when  his  sympathy 
halted,  and  they  were  brief.  For  the  rest  he  let  the 
days  go  by  unprotestingly,  and  enjoyed  Roderick's 
serene  efflorescence  as  he  would  have  done  a  beau 
tiful  summer  sunrise.  Rome  for  the  past  month 
had  been  perfection.  The  annual  descent  of  the 
Goths  had  not  yet  begun,  and  sunny  leisure  seemed 
to  brood  over  the  city. 

Roderick  had  taken  out  a  note-book  and  was 
roughly  sketching  a  memento  of  the  great  Juno. 
Suddenly  there  was  a  noise  on  the  gravel,  and  the 
young  men,  looking  up,  saw  three  persons  advanc 
ing.  One  was  a  woman  of  middle  age,  with  a  rather 

93 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

grand  air  and  a  great  many  furbelows.  She  looked 
very  hard  at  our  friends  as  she  passed,  and  glanced 
back  over  her  shoulder  as  if  to  quicken  the  step  of 
a  young  girl  who  slowly  followed  her.  She  had 
such  an  expansive  majesty  of  mien  that  Rowland 
supposed  she  must  have  some  proprietary  right 
in  the  villa  and  was  not  just  then  in  a  permissive 
mood.  Beside  her  walked  a  little  elderly  man, 
tightly  buttoned  in  a  shabby  black  coat,  but  with  a 
flower  in  his  lappet  and  a  pair  of  soiled  light  gloves. 
He  was  a  semi-grotesque  figure,  and  might  have 
passed  for  a  gentleman  of  the  old  school  reduced 
by  adversity  to  playing  cicerone  to  foreigners  of 
distinction.  He  had  little  black  eyes  that  glittered 
like  diamonds  and  rolled  about  like  balls  of  quick 
silver,  and  a  white  moustache,  cut  short  and  as  stiff 
as  a  worn-out  brush.  He  was  smiling  with  extreme 
urbanity  and  talking  in  a  low  mellifluous  voice  to 
the  lady,  who  evidently  was  not  attentive.  At  a 
considerable  distance  behind  this  couple  strolled  a 
young  girl,  apparently  of  about  twenty.  She  was 
tall  and  slender  and  dressed  with  extreme  elegance; 
she  led  by  a  cord  a  large  poodle  of  the  most  fan 
tastic  aspect.  He  was  combed  and  decked  like  a 
ram  for  sacrifice;  his  trunk  and  haunches  were 
of  the  most  transparent  pink,  his  fleecy  head  and 
shoulders  as  white  as  jeweller's  cotton,  his  tail  and 
ears  ornamented  with  long  blue  ribbons.  He  stepped 
along  stiffly  and  solemnly  beside  his  mistress,  with 
an  air  of  conscious  elegance.  There  was  something 
at  first  slightly  absurd  in  the  sight  of  a  young  lady 
gravely  appended  to  an  animal  of  these  incongru- 

94 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ous  attributes,  and  Roderick,  always  quick  to  react, 
greeted  the  spectacle  with  frank  amusement.  The  girl 
noticed  it  and  turned  her  face  full  upon  him;  her 
expression  was  seemingly  meant  to  enforce  greater 
deference.  It  was  not  deference,  however,  that  the 
show  provoked,  but  startled  submissive  admiration; 
Roderick's  smile  fell  dead,  and  he  sat  eagerly  staring. 
A  pair  of  extraordinary  dark  blue  eyes,  a  mass  of 
dusky  hair  over  a  low  forehead,  a  blooming  oval  of 
perfect  purity,  a  flexible  lip  just  touched  with  dis 
dain,  the  step  and  carnage  of  a  tired  princess  — these 
were  the  general  features  of  his  vision.  The  young 
lady  walked  slowly,  letting  her  long  dress  rustle 
over  the  gravel ;  the  young  men  had  time  to  see 
her  distinctly  before  she  averted  her  face  and  went 
away.  She  left  a  vague  sweet  perfume  behind  her 
as  she  passed. 

"Immortal  powers,"  cried  Roderick,  "what  a 
vision!  In  the  name  of  transcendent  perfection 
who  is  she  ?"  He  sprang  up  and  stood  looking  after 
her  till  she  rounded  a  turn  in  the  avenue.  "What  a 
movement,  what  a  manner,  what  a  poise  of  the  head! 
I  wonder  if  she  would  sit  to  me  ?" 

"You  had  better  go  and  ask  her,"  said  Rowland  in 
the  same  spirit.  "She  was  quite  beautiful  enough." 

"Beautiful?  She's  beauty's  self — she's  a  re 
velation.  I  don't  believe  she  's  living  —  she  's  a 
phantasm,  a  vapour,  an  illusion!" 

"The  poodle,"  said  Rowland,  "is  certainly  alive." 

"No,  he  too  may  be  a  grotesque  phantom,  like 
the  black  dog  in  Faust." 

"I  hope  at  least  that  the  young  lady  has  nothing 

95  ' 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  common  with  Mephistopleles.  She  looked  dan 
gerous." 

"  If  beauty 's  the  wrong  thing,  as  people  think 
at  Northampton,"  said  Roderick,  "  she  's  the  in 
carnation  of  evil.  The  mamma  and  the  queer  old 
gentleman,  moreover,  are  a  pledge  of  her  reality. 
Who  are  they  all?" 

"The  Prince  and  Princess  Ludovisi-Olimpiani  and 
the  principessina"  suggested  Rowland. 

"There  are  no  such  people,"  said  Roderick.  "Be 
sides,  the  little  old  man  is  n't  the  papa."  Rowland 
smiled,  wondering  how  he  had  ascertained  these 
facts,  and  the  young  sculptor  went  on.  "The  old 
man 's  a  Roman,  a  hanger-on  of  the  mamma,  a 
useful  personage  who  now  and  then  gets  asked  to 
dinner.  The  ladies  are  foreigners  from  some  northern 
country;  I  won't  say  which." 

"  Perhaps  from  our  neighbouring  State  of  Maine," 
said  Rowland. 

"No,  she  's  not  an  American,  I  '11  lay  a  wager 
on  that.  She  's  a  daughter  of  this  elder  world.  We 
shall  see  her  again,  I  pray  my  stars ;  but  if  we 
don't  I  shall  have  done  something  I  never  expected 
—  I  shall  have  had  a  glimpse  of  ideal  beauty."  He 
sat  down  again  and  went  on  with  his  sketch  of  the 
Juno,  scrawled  away  for  ten  minutes,  and  then 
handed  the  result  in  silence  to  Rowland.  Rowland 
uttered  an  exclamation  of  surprise  and  applause. 
The  drawing  represented  the  Juno  as  to  the  posi 
tion  of  the  head,  the  brow  and  the  broad  fillet  across 
the  hair;  but  the  eyes,  the  mouth,  the  physiognomy 
were  a  straight  recall  of  the  young  girl  with  the 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

bedecked  beast.  "I  've  been  wanting  a  subject," 
said  Roderick;  "there  's  one  made  to  my  hand! 
And  now  to  tackle  it!" 

They  saw  no  more  of  the  marvellous  maiden, 
though  Roderick  looked  hopefully  for  some  days 
into  the  carriages  on  the  Pincian.  She  had  evi 
dently  only  been  passing  through  Rome;  Naples 
or  Florence  now  happily  possessed  her,  and  she 
was  guiding  her  fleecy  companion  through  the 
Villa  Reale  or  the  Boboli  Gardens  with  the  same 
superb  defiance  of  irony.  Roderick  went  to  work 
and  spent  a  month  shut  up  in  his  studio;  he  had  an 
idea,  and  he  was  not  to  rest  till  he  had  embodied 
it.  He  had  established  himself  in  the  basement  of 
a  huge,  dusky,  dilapidated  old  house  in  that  long, 
tortuous  and  pre-eminently  Roman  street  which 
leads,  under  more  than  one  name,  from  the  Corso 
to  the  Bridge  of  Saint  Angelo.  The  black  archway 
which  admitted  you  might  have  served  as  the  portal 
of  the  Augean  stables,  but  you  emerged  presently 
upon  a  mouldy  little  court,  of  which  the  fourth  side 
was  formed  by  a  narrow  terrace  overhanging  the 
Tiber.  Here,  along  the  parapet,  were  stationed 
half  a  dozen  shapeless  fragments  of  sculpture, 
with  a  couple  of  meagre  orange-trees  in  terra-cotta 
tubs  and  an  oleander  that  never  flowered.  The  un 
clean  historic  river  swept  beneath;  behind  were 
dusky,  reeking  walls,  spotted  here  and  there  with 
hanging  rags  and  flower-pots  in  windows;  opposite, 
at  a  distance,  were  the  bare  brown  banks  of  the 
stream,  the  huge  rotunda  of  Saint  Angelo,  tipped 
with  its  seraphic  statue,  the  dome  of  Saint  Peter's 

97 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  the  broad-topped  pines  of  the  Villa  Pamfili, 
The  place  was  crumbling  and  shabby  and  sinister. 
but  the  river  was  delightful,  the  rent  a  trifle  and 
everything  romantic.  Roderick  was  in  the  best 
humour  with  his  quarters  from  the  first,  and  was 
certain  that  the  faculty  of  production  would  be  in- 
tenser  there  in  an  hour  than  in  twenty  years  at  North 
ampton.  His  studio  was  a  large  empty  room  with  a 
vaulted  ceiling  where  the  vague  dark  traces  of  an 
old  fresco  caused  Rowland,  whenever  he  spent  an 
hour  with  his  friend,  to  stare  at  it  for  some  faint 
survival  of  floating  draperies  and  clasping  arms. 
Roderick  had  housed  his  personal  effects  economic 
ally  in  the  same  quarter.  He  occupied  a  fifth  floor 
on  the  Ripetta,  but  he  was  only  at  home  to  sleep, 
for  when  he  was  not  at  work  he  was  either  loung 
ing  in  Rowland's  more  luxurious  rooms  or  strolling 
through  streets  and  churches  and  gardens. 

Rowland  had  found  a  convenient  corner  in  a 
stately  old  palace  close  to  the  fountain  of  Trevi, 
and  made  himself  a  home  to  which  books  and  pic 
tures  and  prints  and  odds  and  ends  of  curious  fur 
niture  gave  an  air  of  leisurely  permanence.  He  had 
the  habits  of  a  collector;  he  spent  half  his  afternoons 
ransacking  the  dusky  magazines  of  the  curiosity- 
mongers,  and  he  often  made  his  way  in  quest  of  a 
prize  into  the  heart  of  impecunious  Roman  house 
holds  which  had  been  prevailed  upon  to  listen  — 
with  closed  doors  and  an  impenetrably  wary  smile 
—  to  proposals  for  an  hereditary  "antique."  In 
the  evening  often,  under  the  lamp,  amid  dropped 
curtains  and  the  scattered  gleam  of  firelight  upon 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

polished  carvings  and  mellow  paintings,  the  two 
friends  sat  with  their  heads  together,  criticising 
intaglios  and  etchings,  water-colour  drawings  and 
illuminated  missals.  Roderick's  quick  apprecia 
tion  of  every  form  of  artistic  beauty  reminded  his 
companion  of  the  flexible  temperament  of  those 
Italian  artists  of  the  sixteenth  century  who  were 
indifferently  painters  and  sculptors,  sonneteers  and 
engineers.  When  at  his  times  of  most  seeing  he  saw 
the  young  sculptor's  day  pass  in  a  single  sus 
tained  flight,  while  his  own  was  broken  into  a  dozen 
conscious  devices  for  disposing  of  the  hours,  and 
intermingled  with  sighs,  half  suppressed,  some  of 
them,  for  conscience'  sake,  over  what  he  failed  of 
in  action  and  missed  in  possession,  he  felt  a  pang 
of  some  envious  pain.  But  Rowland  had  two  sub 
stantial  aids  for  giving  patience  the  air  of  content 
ment  ;  he  was  an  inquisitive  reader  and  a  passionate 
rambling  rider.  He  plunged  into  bulky  German 
octavos  on  Italian  history  and,  during  long  after 
noons  spent  in  the  saddle,  ranged  over  the  grassy 
desert  that  encircles  Rome.  As  the  season  went  on 
and  the  social  groups  began  to  constitute  themselves 
he  found  that  he  knew  a  great  many  people  and 
that  he  had  easy  occasion  to  know  others.  He  en 
joyed  the  quiet  corner  of  a  drawing-room  beside 
an  agreeable  woman,  and,  though  the  machinery 
of  what  calls  itself  society  seemed  to  him  to  have 
many  superfluous  wheels,  he  accepted  invitations 
and  made  visits  punctiliously,  from  the  conviction 
that  the  only  way  not  to  be  overcome  by  the  ridicu 
lous  side  of  most  of  such  observances  is  to  take 

99 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

them  with  ordered  gravity.  He  introduced  Roderick 
right  and  left,  and  suffered  him  to  make  his  way 
himself — an  enterprise  for  which  Roderick  very 
soon  displayed  an  all-sufficient  capacity.  Wherever 
he  went  he  made,  not  exactly  what  is  called  a  favour 
able  impression,  but  what,  from  a  practical  point 
of  view,  is  better  —  an  ambiguous,  almost  a  violent 
one.  He  took  to  evening  parties  as  a  duck  to  water, 
and  before  the  winter  was  half  over  was  the  most 
freely  and  frequently  discussed  young  man  in  the 
heterogeneous  foreign  colony.  Rowland's  theory 
of  his  own  duty  was  to  let  him  run  his  course  and 
play  his  cards,  only  holding  himself  ready  to  point 
out  shoals  and  pitfalls  and  administer  a  friendly 
propulsion  through  tight  places.  Roderick's  manners 
on  the  precincts  of  the  Pincian  were  quite  the  same 
as  his  manners  on  Cecilia's  verandah ;  they  were  no 
manners,  in  strict  parlance,  at  all.  But  it  remained 
as  true  as  before  that  it  would  have  been  impossible, 
on  the  whole,  to  violate  ceremony  with  less  of  last 
ing  offence.  He  interrupted,  he  contradicted,  he 
spoke  to  people  he  had  never  seen  and  left  his  social 
creditors  without  the  smallest  conversational  in 
terest  on  their  loans ;  he  lounged  and  yawned,  he 
talked  loud  when  he  should  have  talked  low  and 
low  when  he  should  have  talked  loud.  Many  people 
in  consequence  thought  him  insufferably  conceited 
and  declared  that  he  ought  to  wait  till  he  had  some 
thing  to  show  for  his  powers  before  assuming  the 
airs  of  a  spoiled  celebrity.  But  to  Rowland  and  to 
most  friendly  observers  this  judgement  was  quite 
beside  the  mark  and  the  savour  of  the  young  man's 

100 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

naturalness  as  fine  as  good  wine.  He  was  prompt, 
spontaneous,  sincere;  there  were  so  many  people 
at  dinner-tables  and  in  studios  who  were  not,  that 
it  seemed  worth  while  to  allow  this  rare  specimen  all 
possible  freedom  of  action.  If  Roderick  took  the 
words  out  of  your  mouth  when  you  were  just  pre 
pared  to  deliver  them  with  the  most  effective  accent, 
he  did  it  with  a  perfect  good  conscience  and  with 
no  pretension  of  a  better  right  to  being  heard,  but 
simply  because  he  was  full  to  overflowing  of  his 
own  momentary  thought,  which  sprang  from  his 
lips  without  asking  leave.  There  were  persons 
waiting  on  your  periods  much  more  deferentially 
who  were  ten  times  more  capable  of  letting  you 
flounder,  of  a  reflective  impertinence.  The  young 
man  received  from  various  sources,  chiefly  feminine, 
enough  finely-adjusted  advice  to  have  established 
him  in  life  as  an  embodiment  of  the  proprieties, 
and  he  received  it,  as  he  afterwards  listened  to 
criticisms  on  his  statues,  with  unfaltering  candour 
and  good-humour.  Here  and  there  doubtless,  as  he 
went,  he  took  in  a  reef  in  his  sail;  but  he  was  too 
adventurous  a  spirit  to  be  successfully  tamed  and 
he  remained  at  most  points  the  florid,  rather  strident 
young  Virginian  whose  brilliant  aridity  had  been 
the  despair  of  Mr.  Striker.  All  this  was  what  friendly 
commentators  (still  chiefly  feminine)  alluded  to 
when  they  spoke  of  his  delightful  freshness,  and 
critics  of  harsher  sensibilities  (of  the  other  sex) 
when  they  denounced  his  damned  impertinence. 
His  appearance  re-enforced  these  impressions  — 
his  handsome  face,  his  radiant  unaverted  eyes, 

101 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  childish  unmodulated  voice.  Afterwards,  when 
those  who  loved  him  were  in  tears,  there  was  some 
thing  in  all  this  unspotted  brightness  that  seemed  to 
lend  a  mockery  to  the  causes  of  their  sorrow. 

Certainly,  among  the  young  men  of  genius  who 
for  so  many  ages  have  gone  up  to  Rome  to  test 
their  powers,  none  ever  made  a  fairer  beginning 
than  Roderick.  He  rode  his  two  horses  at  once  with 
extraordinary  good  fortune ;  he  established  the 
happiest  modus  vivendi  betwixt  work  and  play. 
He  wrestled  all  day  with  a  mountain  of  clay  in  his 
studio,  and  chattered  half  the  night  away  in  Roman 
drawing-rooms.  It  all  seemed  part  of  a  divine  facil 
ity.  He  was  passionately  interested,  he  was  feeling 
his  powers  ;  now  that  they  had  thoroughly  kindled 
in  the  glowing  aesthetic  atmosphere  of  Rome  the 
ardent  young  fellow  should  be  pardoned  for  be 
lieving  that  he  never  was  to  see  the  end  of  them. 
He  enjoyed  immeasurably,  after  the  chronic  ob 
struction  of  home,  the  sublime  act  of  creation.  He 
kept  models  in  his  studio  till  they  dropped  with 
fatigue;  he  drew  on  other  days  at  the  Capitol  and 
the  Vatican  till  his  own  head  swam  with  his  eager 
ness  and  his  limbs  stiffened  with  the  cold.  He  had 
promptly  set  up  a  life-sized  figure  which  he  called 
an  "Adam,"  and  was  pushing  it  rapidly  towards 
completion.  There  were  naturally  a  great  many 
wiseheads  who  smiled  at  his  precipitancy  and  cited 
him  as  one  more  example  of  Yankee  crudity  —  a 
capital  recruit  to  the  great  army  of  those  who  wish 
to  dance  before  they  can  walk.  They  were  right, 
but  Roderick  was  right  too,  for  the  success  of  his 

102 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

effort  was  not  to  have  been  foreseen;  it  partook 
really,  in  the  case  of  this  particular  figure,  of  the 
miraculous.  He  was  never  afterwards  to  surpass 
the  thing,  to  which  a  good  judge  here  and  there 
had  been  known  to  attribute  a  felicity  of  young 
inspiration  achieved  by  no  other  piece  of  the  period. 
To  Rowland  it  seemed  to  justify  grandly  the  highest 
hopes  of  his  friend,  and  he  said  to  himself  that  if 
he  had  staked  his  reputation  on  bringing  out  a 
young  lion  he  ought  now  to  pass  for  a  famous  con 
noisseur.  In  his  elation  he  travelled  up  to  Carrara 
and  selected  at  the  quarries  the  most  magnificent 
block  of  marble  he  could  find,  and  when  it  came 
down  to  Rome  the  two  young  men  had  a  "cele 
bration."  They  drove  out  to  Albano,  breakfasted 
boisterously  (in  their  respective  measure)  at  the  inn, 
and  lounged  away  the  day  in  the  sun  on  the  top  of 
Monte  Cavo.  Roderick's  head  was  full  of  ideas 
for  other  works,  which  he  described  with  infinite 
spirit  and  eloquence,  as  vividly  as  if  they  were  ranged 
on  their  pedestals  before  him.  He  had  irrepress 
ible  reactions;  things  he  saw  in  the  streets,  in  the 
country,  things  he  heard  and  read,  effects  he  found 
just  missed  or  half  expressed  in  the  works  of  others, 
wrought  on  his  mind  for  provocation,  and  he  was 
terribly  uneasy  until  in  some  form  or  other  he  had 
taken  up  the  glove  and  set  his  lance  in  rest. 

The  Adam  was  put  into  marble,  and  all  the  world 
came  to  see,,  it.  Of  the  criticisms  passed  upon  it 
this  history  undertakes  to  offer  no  record;  over 
many  of  them  the  two  young  men  had  a  daily  laugh 
for  a  month,  and  some  of  the  formulas  of  the  com- 

103 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

mentators,  restrictive  or  indulgent,  furnished  Roder 
ick  with  a  permanent  supply  of  humorous  catch 
words.  But  people  enough  spoke  flattering  good 
sense  to  make  the  author  of  the  work  feel  as  if  he 
were  already  half  famous.  It  passed  formally  into 
Rowland's  possession  and  was  paid  for  as  if  an  il 
lustrious  name  had  been  chiselled  on  the  pedestal. 
Poor  Roderick  owed  by  that  hour  every  franc  of  the 
money.  It  was  not  for  this,  however,  but  because 
he  was  so  gloriously  in  the  mood,  that,  denying 
himself  all  breathing-time,  on  the  same  day  he  had 
given  the  last  touch  to  the  Adam,  he  began  to  shape 
the  rough  contour  of  an  Eve.  This  experiment  went 
forward  with  equal  rapidity  and  success.  Roderick 
lost  his  temper  time  and  again  with  his  models, 
who  offered  but  a  gross  degenerate  image  of  his 
splendid  ideal;  but  his  ideal,  as  he  assured  Rowland, 
became  gradually  such  a  fixed,  vivid  presence  that 
he  had  only  to  shut  his  eyes  to  behold  an  image 
far  more  to  his  purpose  than  the  poor  girl  who 
stood  posturing  at  forty  sous  an  hour.  The  Eve  was 
finished  in  three  months,  and  the  feat  was  ex 
traordinary,  as  well  as  the  statue,  which  represented 
a  creature  of  consummately  wrought  beauty.  When 
the  spring  began  to  clasp  the  rugged  old  city  in  its 
branching  arms  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  done 
a  handsome  winter's  work  and  had  fairly  earned 
a  holiday.  He  took  a  liberal  one  and  lounged  away 
at  his  ease  the  lovely  Roman  May.  He  looked  very 
contented;  with  himself  perhaps  at  times  a  trifle 
too  obviously.  But  who  could  have  said  without  good 
reason?  He  was  "flushed  with  triumph";  this 

104 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

classic  phrase  portrayed  him  to  Rowland's  sense.  He 
would  lose  himself  in  long  reveries  and  emerge  from 
them  with  a  convulsed,  refreshed  face  and  larger 
motions.  Rowland  grudged  him  none  of  his  ges 
tures  and  rejoiced  beyond  any  expression  in  the  two 
guarantees  of  his  power.  He  had  these  productions 
transported  to  his  own  apartment,  and  one  warm 
evening  in  May  he  gave  a  little  dinner  in  honour  of 
the  artist.  It  was  small,  but  Rowland  had  meant 
it  should  be  conveniently  composed.  He  thought 
over  his  friends  and  chose  four.  They  were  all  per 
sons  with  whom  he  lived  in  a  certain  intimacy. 


VI 


ONE  of  them  was  an  American  sculptor  of  French  ex 
traction,  or  remotely  perhaps  of  Italian,  for  he  wore 
like  a  charm,  in  the  Roman  air,  his  fine  name  of 
Gloriani.  He  was  a  man  of  forty,  he  had  been  living 
for  years  in  Paris  and  in  Rome,  and  he  now  drove 
an  active  trade  in  sculpture  of  the  ingenious  or  soph 
isticated  school.  In  his  youth  he  had  had  money; 
but  he  had  spent  it  recklessly,  much  of  it  scandal 
ously,  and  at  twenty-six  had  found  himself  obliged 
to  make  capital  of  his  talent.  This  was  quite  inim 
itable,  and  fifteen  years  of  indefatigable  exercise 
had  brought  it  to  perfection.  Rowland  admitted 
its  power,  though  it  gave  him  very  little  pleasure; 
what  he  relished  in  the  man  was  the  extraor 
dinary  vivacity  and  frankness,  not  to  call  it  the  im 
pudence,  of  his  opinions.  He  had  a  definite,  prac 
tical  scheme  of  art,  and  he  knew  at  least  what  he 
meant.  In  this  sense  he  was  almost  too  knowing. 
There  were  so  many  of  the  aesthetic  fraternity  who 
were  floundering  in  unknown  seas,  without  a  notion 
of  which  way  their  noses  were  turned,  that  Glori 
ani,  conscious  and  compact,  unlimitedly  intelligent 
and  consummately  clever,  helpful  only  as  to  his 
own  duties,  and  at  once  gracefully  deferential  and 
profoundly  indifferent  to  those  of  others,  had  for 
Rowland  an  effect  of  refreshment  quite  independ 
ent  of  the  character  of  his  works.  These  were  con- 

106 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sidered  by  most  people  to  belong  to  a  very  extrava 
gant,  and  by  many  to  a  thoroughly  depraved  type. 
Others  found  in  them  strange  secrets  of  the  plastic 
and  paid  huge  prices  for  them;  and  indeed  to  be 
able  to  point  to  one  of  Gloriani's  figures  in  the  best 
light  in  your  library  was  tolerable  proof  that  you 
were  not  a  fool.  Of  an  art  that  had  wandered  far 
they  freely  spoke,  and  of  a  taste  that  was  the  latest 
fruit  of  time.  It  was  the  artist's  opinion  that  there 
is  no  essential  difference  between  beauty  and  ugli 
ness;  that  they  overlap  and  intermingle  in  a  quite 
inextricable  manner;  that  there  is  no  saying  where 
one  begins  and  the  other  ends;  that  hideousness 
grimaces  at  you  suddenly  from  out  of  the  very  bosom 
of  loveliness,  and  beauty  blooms  before  your  eyes 
in  the  lap  of  vileness;  that  it  is  a  waste  of  wit  to 
nurse  metaphysical  distinctions  and  a  sadly  meagre 
entertainment  to  caress  imaginary  lines;  that  the 
thing  to  aim  at  is  the  expressive  and  the  way  to 
reach  it  is  by  ingenuity;  that  for  this  purpose  every 
thing  may  serve  and  that  a  consummate  work  is 
a  sort  of  hotch-potch  of  the  pure  and  the  impure, 
the  graceful  and  the  grotesque.  Its  prime  duty  is 
to  amuse,  to  puzzle,  to  fascinate,  to  report  on  a  real 
aesthetic  adventure.  Gloriani's  effects,  elegant  and 
strange,  exquisite  and  base,  made  no  appeal  to  Row 
land  as  a  purchaser,  but  the  artist  was  such  an 
independent  spirit,  and  was  withal  so  deluged  with 
orders,  that  this  signified  nothing  for  their  friend 
ship.  This  highly  modern  master  was  a  free  and 
vivid  talker,  whose  phrase  seemed  ever  to  have  in 
it,  if  not  the  touch  of  the  brush,  at  least  the  print 

107 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  the  expert  thumb.  He  might  have  been,  facially, 
for  firmness,  one  of  his  own  expensive  bronzes,  and 
when  sometimes  he  received  you  at  his  lodging  he  in 
troduced  you  to  a  lady  without  art  of  utterance  whom 
he  called  Madame  Gloriani  —  which  she  was  not. 

Rowland's  second  guest  was  also  an  artist,  but 
of  a  very  different  type.  His  friends  called  him  Sam 
Singleton;  he  was  an  American,  and  he  had  been 
in  Rome  a  couple  of  years.  He  painted  small  land 
scapes,  chiefly  in  water-colour;  Rowland  had  seen 
one  of  them  in  a  shop  window,  had  liked  it  ex 
tremely  and,  ascertaining  his  address,  had  gone  to 
see  him  and  found  him  established  in  a  very  humble 
studio  near  the  Piazza  Barberini,  where  apparently 
fame  and  fortune  had  not  yet  come  his  way.  Row 
land,  treating  him  as  a  discovery,  bought  several 
of  his  pictures;  Singleton  made  few  speeches,  but 
was  intensely  grateful.  Rowland  heard  afterwards 
that  when  he  first  came  to  Rome  he  painted  worth 
less  daubs  and  gave  no  promise  of  talent.  Improve 
ment  had  come,  however,  hand  in  hand  with  patient 
industry,  and  his  talent,  though  of  a  slender  and 
delicate  order,  was  now  incontestable.  It  was  as 
yet  but  scantily  recognised  and  he  had  hard  work 
to  hold  out.  Rowland  hung  his  little  water-colours 
on  the  library  wall,  and  found  that  as  he  lived 
with  them  he  grew  very  fond  of  them.  Singleton, 
short  and  spare,  was  made  as  if  for  sitting  on  very 
small  camp-stools  and  eating  the  tiniest  luncheons. 
He  had  a  transparent  brown  regard,  a  perpetual 
smile,  an  extraordinary  expression  of  modesty  and 
patience.  He  listened  much  more  willingly  than  he 

1 08 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

talked,  with  a  little  fixed  grateful  grin;  he  blushed 
when  he  spoke,  and  always  offered  his  ideas  as  if 
he  were  handing  you  useful  objects  of  your  own 
that  you  had  unconsciously  dropped  ;  so  that  his 
credit  could  be  at  most  for  honesty.  He  was  so 
perfect  an  example  of  the  little  noiseless  devoted 
worker  whom  chance,  in  the  person  of  a  moneyed 
patron,  has  never  taken  by  the  hand,  that  Rowland 
would  have  liked  to  befriend  him  by  stealth.  Sin 
gleton  had  expressed  a  yearning  approval  of  Roder 
ick's  productions,  but  he  had  not  yet  met  the  young 
master.  Roderick  was  lounging  against  the  chimney- 
piece  when  he  came  in,  and  Rowland  presently 
introduced  him.  The  visitor  stood  as  a  privileged 
pilgrim,  with  folded  hands,  blushing,  smiling  and 
looking  up  as  if  Roderick  had  been  himself  a  statue 
on  a  pedestal.  He  began  to  murmur  something 
about  his  pleasure,  his  admiration;  the  desire  to 
say  something  very  appreciative  gave  him  almost 
an  air  of  distress.  Roderick  looked  down  at  him 
surprised,  and  suddenly  burst  into  a  laugh.  Sin 
gleton  paused  a  moment  and  then,  with  an  intenser 
smile,  went  on:  "Well,  sir,  your  work's  most  inter 
esting,  all  the  same!" 

Rowland's  two  other  guests  were  ladies,  and  one 
of  them,  Miss  Blanchard,  belonged  also  to  the 
artistic  fraternity.  She  was  an  American,  she  was 
young,  she  was  pretty,  and  had  made  her  way  to 
Rome  alone  and  unaided.  She  lived  alone,  or  with 
no  other  duenna  than  a  bushy-browed  old  serving- 
woman,  though  indeed  she  had  a  friendly  neighbour 
in  the  person  of  a  certain  Madame  Grandoni,  who 

109 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  various  social  emergencies  lent  her  a  protecting 
wing  and  had  come  with  her  to  Rowland's  dinner. 
Miss  Blanchard  had  a  small  fortune,  but  she  was 
not  above  selling  her  pictures.  These  represented 
generally  a  bunch  of  dew-sprinkled  roses,  with 
the  dew-drops  very  highly  finished,  or  else  a  way 
side  shrine  and  a  peasant  woman,  with  her  back 
turned,  kneeling  before  it.  She  did  backs  very  well, 
but  was  a  little  weak  in  faces.  Flowers,  however, 
were  the  chief  of  her  diet,  and,  though  her  touch  was 
a  little  old-fashioned  and  finical,  she  painted  them 
with  remarkable  skill.  Her  pictures  were  chiefly 
bought  by  the  English.  Rowland  had  made  her 
acquaintance  early  in  the  winter,  and  as  she  kept 
a  saddle  horse  and  rode  a  great  deal  he  had  asked 
permission  to  be  her  cavalier.  In  this  way  they  had 
become  informal  allies.  Miss  Blanchard's  name 
was  Augusta;  she  was  slender,  pale  and  elegant; 
she  had  a  very  pretty  head  and  brilliant  auburn  hair, 
which  she  braided  with  classic  simplicity.  She 
talked  in  a  sweet  soft  voice,  inclined  to  the  flower 
of  speech  scarcely  less  than  to  that  of  the  garden, 
and  made  literary  allusions.  These  had  often  a 
patriotic  strain,  and  Rowland  had  more  than  once 
been  treated  to  quotations  from  Mrs.  Sigourney 
in  the  cork-woods  of  Monte  Mario,  and  from  Mr. 
Willis  among  the  ruins  of  Veii.  Rowland  was  of  a 
dozen  different  minds  about  her,  and  was  half  sur 
prised  at  times  to  find  himself  treating  it  as  a  matter 
of  serious  moment  that  he  should  like  her  or  not. 
He  admired  her,  and  indeed  there  was  something 
exemplary  in  her  combination  of  beauty  and  talent, 

no 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  isolation  and  self-support.  He  used  sometimes 
to  go  into  the  little  high-niched  ordinary  room 
which  served  her  as  a  studio,  to  find  her  working 
at  a  panel  six  inches  square,  by  an  open  casement, 
profiled  against  the  deep  blue  Roman  sky.  She 
welcomed  him  with  a  meek-eyed  dignity  that  made 
her  seem  a  painted  saint  on  a  church  window  re 
ceiving  the  daylight  in  all  her  being.  The  breath 
of  vulgar  report  passed  her  by  with  folded  wings. 
And  yet  Rowland  wondered  why  he  could  n't  like 
her  better.  If  he  failed,  the  reason  was  not  far  to 
seek.  There  was  another  woman  whom  he  liked 
better,  an  image  in  his  heart  which  gave  itself  small 
airs  of  exclusiveness. 

On  that  evening  to  which  allusion  has  been  made, 
when  Rowland  was  left  alone  between  the  starlight 
and  the  waves  with  the  sudden  knowledge  that  Mary 
Garland  was  to  become  another  man's  wife,  he  had 
taken  after  a  while  the  simple  resolution  to  forget 
her.  And  every  day  since,  like  a  famous  philosopher 
who  wished  to  abbreviate  his  mourning  for  a  faith 
ful  servant,  he  had  said  to  himself  in  substance: 
"Remember  to  forget  Mary  Garland."  Sometimes 
it  seemed  as  if  he  were  succeeding;  then  suddenly, 
when  he  was  least  expecting  it,  he  would  find  her 
name  inaudibly  on  his  lips  and  seem  to  see  her  eyes 
meeting  his  eyes.  All  this  made  him  uncomfortable 
and  seemed  to  plant  he  scarce  knew  what  ugly 
danger  on  the  brow  of  the  future.  False  positions 
were  not  to  his  taste;  he  shrank  from  imperious 
passions,  and  the  idea  of  finding  himself  jealous  of 
an  unsuspecting  friend  could  only  disgust  him. 

ill 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

More  than  ever  then  the  path  of  good  manners 
was  to  forget  Mary  Garland,  and  he  cultivated  ob 
livion,  as  we  may  say,  in  the  person  of  Miss  Blanch- 
ard.  Her  fine  temper,  he  said  to  himself,  was  a 
trifle  cold  and  conscious,  her  purity  prudish  per 
haps,  her  culture  pedantic.  But  since  he  was  obliged 
to  turn  the  image  of  the  girl  in  far  New  England 
with  its  face  to  the  wall,  his  dull  star  owed  him  a 
compensation,  and  he  had  fits  of  angry  sadness  in 
which  it  seemed  to  him  that  to  attest  his  right  to 
sentimental  satisfaction  he  should  indulge  in  some 
defiantly  incongruous  passion.  And  what  was  the 
use,  after  all,  of  bothering  about  a  possible  which 
was  only  perhaps  a  dream  ?  Even  if  Mary  Garland 
had  been  free,  what  right  had  he  to  assume  that 
he  should  have  pleased  her  ?  The  actual  was  good 
enough.  Miss  Blanchard  had  beautiful  hair,  and 
if  she  was  a  trifle  old-maidish  there  was  nothing 
like  the  conjugal  tie  for  curing  that  deformity. 

Madame  Grandoni,  who  had  formed  with  the 
companion  of  Rowland's  rides  an  alliance  which 
might  have  been  called  defensive  on  the  part  of  the 
former  and  attractive  on  that  of  Miss  Blanchard, 
was  a  thoroughly  ugly  old  lady,  highly  esteemed  in 
Roman  society  for  her  homely  benevolence  and  her 
shrewd  and  humorous  good  sense.  She  had  been 
the  widow  of  a  German  archaeologist  who  came  to 
Rome  in  the  early  ages  as  attache  of  the  Prussian 
legation  on  the  Capitoline.  Her  acuteness  had  failed 
her  but  on  a  single  occasion,  that  of  her  second  mar 
riage.  This  occasion  would  have  demanded  a  double 
dose  of  it,  but  these  are  by  general  consent  not  test 

112 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

cases.  A  couple  of  years  after  her  first  husband's 
death  she  had  accepted  the  hand  and  the  name  of  a 
Neapolitan  music-master  ten  years  younger  than  her 
self  and  with  no  fortune  but  his  fiddle-bow.  The 
union  had  proved  a  union  of  exasperated  opposites, 
and  the  Maestro  Grandoni  was  suspected  of  using 
the  fiddle-bow  as  an  instrument  of  conjugal  cor 
rection.  He  had  finally  run  off  with  a  prima  donna 
assoluta,  who,  it  was  commonly  hoped,  had  given 
him  a  taste  of  the  quality  implied  in  her  title.  He 
was  believed  to  be  living  still,  but  he  had  shrunk 
to  a  small  black  spot  in  Madame  Grandoni's  life, 
and  for  ten  years  she  had  not  mentioned  his  name. 
She  wore  a  light  flaxen  wig,  which  was  never  very 
artfully  adjusted;  but  this  mattered  little,  as  she 
made  no  secret  of  it.  She  used  to  say  "I  was  not 
always  so  ugly  as  this;  as  a  young  girl  I  had  beautiful 
golden  hair,  very  much  the  colour  of  my  wig."  She 
had  worn  from  time  immemorial  an  old  blue  satin 
dress  and  a  white  crape  shawl  embroidered  in  colours; 
her  appearance  was  ridiculous,  but  she  had  an 
interminable  Teutonic  pedigree,  and  her  manners 
in  every  presence  were  easy  and  jovial,  as  became 
a  lady  whose  ancestor  had  been  cup-bearer  to 
Frederick  Barbarossa.  Thirty  years'  observation  of 
Roman  society  had  sharpened  her  wit  and  given  her 
an  inexhaustible  store  of  anecdote;  but  she  had 
beneath  her  crumpled  bodice  a  deep-welling  fund 
of  Teutonic  sentiment,  which  she  communicated 
only  to  the  objects  of  her  particular  favour.  Rowland 
had  a  great  regard  for  her,  and  she  repaid  it  by 
wishing  him  to  offer  somebody  his  hand,  which  she 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

called  his  hant.  She  never  saw  him  without  whis 
pering  to  him  that  Augusta  Blanchard  was  just  the 
somebody. 

It  seemed  to  him  indeed  a  foreshadowing  of 
matrimony  to  see  Augusta  Blanchard  stand  grace 
fully  on  his  hearth-rug  and  bloom  behind  the  cen 
tral  bouquet  at  his  circular  dinner-table.  The 
dinner  was  very  prosperous,  and  Roderick  amply 
filled  his  position  as  hero  of  the  feast.  He  had  always 
an  air  of  dauntless  intention,  but  on  this  occasion 
he  manifested  a  good  deal  of  harmless  pleasure 
in  his  glory.  He  drank  freely  and  talked  bravely; 
he  leaned  back  in  his  chair  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets  and  flung  open  the  gates  of  his  eloquence. 
Singleton  sat  gazing  and  listening  open-mouthed, 
as  if  Phoebus  Apollo  had  been  talking.  Gloriani's 
fine  smile  showed  the  light  of  general  scepticism 
and  an  evident  disposition  to  draw  Roderick  out. 
Rowland  had  his  apprehensions,  for  he  knew  that 
theory  was  not  his  young  friend's  strong  point  and 
that  it  was  never  fair  to  take  his  measure  from  his 
mere  magnificence  of  speech. 

"As  you  've  begun  with  Adam  and  Eve,"  said 
Gloriani,  "I  suppose  you  're  going  straight  through 
the  Bible."  He  was  one  of  the  persons  who  thought 
Roderick  delightfully  fresh. 

"I  may  make  a  David,"  said  Roderick,  "but  I 
shall  not  try  any  more  of  the  Old  Testament  people. 
I  don't  like  the  Jews;  I  like  the  big  nose,  as  any 
sculptor  must,  but  only  the  Christian,  or  still  better 
the  pagan,  form.  David,  the  boy  David,  is  rather 
an  exception;  you  can  think  of  him  and  treat  him 

114 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

as  a  young  Greek.  Standing  forth  there  on  the  plain 
of  battle  between  the  contending  armies,  rushing 
forward  to  let  fly  his  stone,  he  looks  like  a  beauti 
ful  runner  at  the  Olympic  games.  After  that  I  shall 
skip  to  the  New  Testament.  I  mean  to  make  a  rip 
ping  Christ." 

"You  will  put  nothing  of  the  Olympic  games 
into  him,  I  hope,"  said  Gloriani. 

"Oh,  I  shall  make  him  very  different  from  the 
Christ  of  tradition;  more  —  more — "  And  Rode 
rick  paused  a  moment  to  think.  This  was  the  first 
that  Rowland  had  heard  of  his  so  oddly  described 
Christ. 

"More  rationalistic,  I  suppose,"  suggested  Miss 
Blanchard. 

"More  idealistic!"  cried  Roderick.  "The  per 
fection  of  form,  you  know,  to  symbolise  the  per 
fection  of  spirit." 

"For  a  companion-piece,"  said  Miss  Blanchard, 
"you  ought  —  since  a  sculptor  'must'  like  the  big 
nose  —  to  make  a  Judas." 

"Never!  I  mean  never  to  make  anything  ugly. 
The  Greeks  never  made  anything  ugly,  and  I  'm 
a  Hellenist;  I  'm  not  a  Hebraist!  I  have  been 
thinking  lately  of  making  a  Cain,  but  I  should  never 
dream  of  making  him  ugly.  He  should  be  a  very 
handsome  fellow  indeed,  and  he  should  lift  up  the 
murderous  club  with  the  beautiful  movement  of 
the  fighters  in  the  Greek  friezes  who  are  chopping 
at  their  enemies." 

"There's  no  use  trying  to  be  a  Greek,"  said  Glori 
ani.  "  If  Phidias  were  to  come  back  he  would  recom- 

"5 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

mend  you  to  give  it  up  —  he  'd  send  you  about 
your  business.  I  'm  half  Italian  and  half  French, 
and,  as  a  whole,  an  abandoned  cosmopolite.  What 
sort  of  a  Greek  should  I  be  ?  I  think  the  Judas  is 
a  capital  idea  for  something.  Much  obliged  to  you, 
madam,  for  the  suggestion.  What  an  insidious 
little  scoundrel  one  might  make  of  him,  sitting  there 
nursing  his  money-bag  and  his  treachery!  There 
may  be  a  great  deal  of  interest  in  an  ugly  nose, 
my  dear  sir  —  especially  if  one  has  put  it  there." 

"You  mean  there  may  be  a  great  deal  of  char 
acter.  Very  likely,"  said  Roderick,  "but  it  's  not 
the  sort  of  character  I  care  for.  I  care  only  for 
beauty  of  Type  —  there  it  is,  if  you  want  to  know. 
That  's  as  good  a  profession  of  faith  as  another. 
In  future,  so  far  as  my  things  don't  rise  to  that  in 
a  living  way,  you  may  set  them  down  as  failures. 
For  me  it 's  either  that  or  nothing.  It 's  against 
the  taste  of  the  day,  I  know;  we  've  really  lost  the 
faculty  to  understand  beauty  in  the  large  ideal  way. 
We  stand  like  a  race  with  shrunken  muscles,  star 
ing  helplessly  at  the  weights  our  forefathers  easily 
lifted.  But  I  don't  hesitate  to  proclaim  it  —  I  mean 
to  lift  them  again!  I  mean  to  go  in  for  big  things; 
that 's  my  notion  of  my  art.  I  mean  to  do  things  that 
will  be  simple  and  sublime.  You  shall  see  if  they 
won't  be  sublime.  Excuse  me  if  I  brag  a  little; 
all  those  Italian  fellows  in  the  Renaissance  used 
to  brag.  There  was  a  sensation  once  common,  I  'm 
sure,  in  the  human  breast  —  a  kind  of  religious 
awe  in  the  presence  of  a  marble  image  newly  created 
and  expressing  the  human  type  in  superhuman 

116 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

purity.  When  Phidias  and  Praxiteles  had  their 
statues  of  goddesses  unveiled  in  the  temples  of  the 
./Egean,  don't  you  suppose  there  was  something  more 
than  a  cold-blooded,  critical  flutter  ?  The  thing 
that  there  was  is  the  thing  I  want  to  bring  back. 
I  want  to  thrill  you,  with  my  cold  marble,  when 
you  look.  I  want  to  produce  the  sacred  terror;  a 
Hera  that  will  make  you  turn  blue,  an  Aphrodite  that 
will  make  you  turn  —  well,  faint.** 

"So  that  when  we  come  and  see  you,"  said  Ma 
dame  Grandoni,  "we  must  be  sure  and  bring  our 
smelling-bottles.  And  pray  have  a  few  sofas  con 
veniently  placed." 

"Phidias  and  Praxiteles,"  Miss  Blanchard  re 
marked,  "had  the  advantage  of  believing  in  their 
goddesses.  I  insist  on  believing,  for  myself,  that  the 
pagan  mythology  is  n't  to  be  explained  away  by  a 
ruthless  analysis,  and  that  Venus  and  Juno  and 
Apollo  and  Mercury  used  to  come  down  in  a  cloud 
into  this  very  city  of  Rome  where  we  sit  talking 
nineteenth-century  English." 

"Nineteenth-century   nonsense,    my   dear!"   cried 
Madame  Grandoni.     "Mr.  Hudson  may  be  a  new 
Phidias,  but  Venus  and  Juno  —  that  's  you  and  I  - 
arrived  to-day  in  a  very  dirty  cab;  and  were  cheated 
by  the  driver  too." 

"But,  my  dear  fellow,"  objected  Gloriani,  "you 
don't  mean  to  say  you  are  going  to  make  over  in 
cold  blood  those  poor  old  academic  bugbears,  the 
prize  bores  of  Olympus.  'Turn  blue  '  ?  —  they  may 
make  us  indeed!  Only  Canova  has  so  thoroughly 
shown  them  how  that  there  's  nothing  left  for  you." 

"7 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Ah,  I  think  I  could  have  shown  Canova  how," 
Roderick  gaily  rejoined.  "It  won't  matter  a  rap 
what  you  call  them  —  you  '11  just  know  them  for 
more  than  mortal.  They  shall  be  simply  divine  forms. 
They  shall  be  Beauty;  they  shall  be  Wisdom;  they 
shall  be  Power;  they  shall  be  Genius;  they  shall  be 
Daring.  That  's  all  the  Greek  divinities  were." 

"That  's  rather  depressingly  abstract,  you  know," 
said  Miss  Blanchard. 

"Cher  beau  jeune  homme,"  Gloriani  remarked, 
"there  's  only  one  thing  in  the  world  that  's  divine 
for  us  —  wiiich  is  to  be  twenty-five  years  old.  You're 
delightfully  young !" 

"Isn't  that  indeed  just  it?"  Singleton  echoed 
with  a  flush  of  sympathy  across  his  large  white 
forehead.  "You  can  do  anything  in  the  world, 
Mr.  Hudson,  that  you  try." 

"Well,  there  are  all  the  Forces  and  Elements 
and  Mysteries  of  Nature,"  Mr.  Hudson  assentingly 
pursued.  "I  mean  to  do  the  Morning;  I  mean 
to  do  the  Night!  I  mean  to  do  the  Ocean  and 
the  Mountains,  the  Moon  and  the  West  Wind.  I 
mean  to  make  a  magnificent  image  of  my  Native 
Land." 

"  Your  native  land,  your  native  mountains  — 
why  not  say  at  once  your  native  moon  ?  You  do 
make  it  shine  on  us!"  Gloriani  kindly  laughed. 

"I  shall  —  and  it  will  make  you  at  least  mad!" 
Roderick  returned  with  expression.  "My  figures 
shall  make  no  contortions,  but  they  shall  mean  a 
tremendous  deal." 

"I  'm  sure  there  are  contortions  enough  in  Michael 
118 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Angelo,"   said   Madame   Grandoni.    "Perhaps  you 
don't  approve  of  him." 

"Ah,  why  drag  him  in  ?"  the  young  man  reminis- 
cently  cried;  at  which  they  were  none  of  them  too 
stale  of  spirit  to  laugh.  He  had  done,  after  all,  some 
fine  things. 

Rowland  had  bidden  one  of  the  servants  bring 
him  a  small  portfolio  of  prints  and  had  taken  out 
a  photograph  of  Roderick's  little  statue  of  the 
drinking  youth.  It  pleased  him  to  see  his  friend 
sitting  there  in  radiant  ardour,  defending  idealism 
against  so  knowing  an  apostle  of  the  sophisticated, 
and  he  wished  to  help  Gloriani  to  be  confuted.  He 
silently  handed  him  the  photograph. 

"Bless  me!"  cried  his  guest.  "Did  be  go  and  do 
this  ?" 

"Oh,  ages  ago,"  said  Roderick. 

Gloriani  looked  at  the  photograph  a  long  time 
and  with  evident  admiration.  "  It's  deucedly  pretty," 
he  declared  at  last.  "  But,  my  dear  young  friend, 
it  's  a  kind  of  thing  you  positively  can't  keep  up, 
you  know." 

"I  shall  do  better,"  said  Roderick. 

"You  '11  do  worse.  You  '11  do  it  on  purpose. 
This  thing  was  n't  done  on  purpose.  It  could  n't  have 
been.  You  '11  have  at  any  rate  to  take  to  violence, 
to  contortions,  to  romanticism,  in  self-defence.  Your 
beauty,  as  you  call  it,  is  the  effort  of  a  man  to  quit 
the  earth  by  flapping  his  arms  very  hard.  He  may 
jump  about  or  stand  on  tiptoe,  but  he  can't  do  more. 
Here  you  jump  about  very  gracefully,  I  admit;  but 
you  can't  fly;  there  's  no  use  trying." 

119 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"My  colossal  'America'  shall  answer  you!"  said 
Roderick,  shaking  towards  him  a  tall  glass  of  cham 
pagne  and  drinking  it  down. 

Singleton  had  taken  the  photograph  and  was 
poring  over  it  with  a  little  murmur  of  delight.  "Was 
this  done  in  America  ?"  he  asked. 

"In  a  square  white  wooden  house  at  Northamp 
ton  Mass,"  Roderick  answered. 

"Dear  old  white  wooden  houses!"  said  Miss 
Blanchard.  "Dear  old  Northampton,  dear  old 
'Mass'!" 

"If  you  could  do  as  well  as  this  there,"  said  Single 
ton  blushing  and  smiling,  "one  might  say  that  really 
you  had  only  to  lose  by  coming  to  Rome." 

"Our  host's  to  blame  for  that,"  said  Roderick. 
"But  I  'm  willing  to  risk  the  danger." 

The  photograph  had  been  passed  to  Madame 
Grandoni,  whose  eyeglass  had  the  handle  of  a  warm 
ing-pan.  "  It  resembles,"  she  said, "  the  things  a  young 
man  used  to  do  whom  I  knew  years  ago,  when  I  first 
came  to  Rome.  He  was  a  German,  a  pupil  of  Over- 
beck  and  a  votary  of  spiritual  art.  He  used  to 
wear  a  black  velvet  tunic  and  a  very  low  shirt-collar; 
he  had  a  neck  like  a  sickly  crane  and  he  let  his  hair 
grow  down  to  his  shoulders.  His  name  was  Herr 
Schafgans.  He  never  painted  anything  so  profane 
as  a  man  taking  a  drink,  for  none  of  his  people  had 
anything  so  vulgar  as  an  appetite.  They  were  all 
angles  and  edges  —  they  looked  like  diagrams  of 
human  nature.  They  were  figures  if  you  please, 
but  geometrical  figures.  He  would  n't  have  agreed 
with  Gloriani  any  more  than  you.  He  used  to  come 

120 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  see  me  very  often,  and  in  those  days  I  thought 
his  tunic  and  his  long  neck  infallible  symptoms  of 
genius.  His  talk  was  all  of  gilded  aureoles  and 
beatific  visions;  he  lived  on  weak  wine  and  bis 
cuits  and  wore  a  lock  of  Saint  Somebody's  hair  in 
a  little  bag  round  his  neck.  If  he  was  not  a  Beato 
Angelico  it  was  not  his  own  fault.  I  hope  with  all 
my  heart  that  Mr.  Hudson  will  do  the  fine  things 
he  talks  about,  but  he  must  bear  in  mind  the  history 
of  dear  Mr.  Schafgans  as  a  warning  against  high- 
flown  pretensions.  One  fine  day  this  poor  young 
man  fell  in  love  with  a  Roman  model,  though  she 
had  never  sat  to  him,  I  believe,  for  she  was  a  buxom, 
bold-faced,  high-coloured  creature,  and  he  painted 
none  but  pale  and  sickly  women.  He  offered  to 
marry  her,  and  she  looked  at  him  from  head  to  foot, 
gave  a  shrug  and  consented.  But  he  was  ashamed 
to  set  up  his  menage  in  Rome.  They  went  to  Naples, 
and  there,  a  couple  of  years  afterwards,  I  saw  him. 
The  poor  fellow  was  ruined.  His  wife  used  to  beat 
him,  and  he  had  taken  to  drinking.  He  wore  a  ragged 
black  coat  and  had  a  blotchy  red  face.  Madame 
had  turned  washerwoman  and  used  to  make  him 
go  and  fetch  the  dirty  linen.  There  was  nothing, 
unfortunately,  to  be  done,  in  the  'doing-up'  way, 
with  his  genius  —  that  would  n't  'wash,'  and  he  was 
getting  his  living  by  painting  views  of  Vesuvius  in 
eruption  on  the  little  boxes  they  sell  at  Sorrento." 

"Moral:  don't  fall  in  love  with  a  buxom  Roman 
model,"  said  Roderick.  "  I  'm  much  obliged  to 
you  for  your  story,  but  I  don't  mean  to  fall  in  love 
with  any  one." 

121 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Gloriani  had  possessed  himself  of  the  photograph 
again  and  was  looking  at  it  curiously.  "Ah,  you  '11 
have  been  young,  par  exemple  —  you  '11  have  been 
young!"  he  exclaimed  with  almost  confessed  envy. 
"It 's  the  only  case  I  've  ever  known  of  genius  in 
the  cradle." 

The  two  sculptors  continued  to  play  with  paradox 
after  dinner,  and  Rowland  left  them  at  it  where,  in 
a  corner  of  the  drawing-room,  the  vague  wThite 
presence  of  Roderick's  Eve,  above  them  in  the 
shaded  lamplight,  might  have  been  that  of  the 
guardian  angel  of  the  young  idealist.  Singleton  was 
listening  to  Madame  Grandoni,  and  Rowland  took 
his  place  on  the  sofa  near  Miss  Blanchard.  They 
had  a  good  deal  of  familiar  desultory  talk;  every 
now  and  then  Madame  Grandoni  turned  round  at 
them.  Miss  Blanchard  at  last  asked  Rowland  cer 
tain  questions  about  Roderick  —  who  he  was,  where 
he  came  from,  whether  it  was  true,  as  she  had 
heard,  that  Rowland  had  discovered  him  and 
brought  him  out  at  his  own  expense.  Rowland 
answered  her  questions;  to  the  last  he  gave  a 
vague  affirmative.  Finally,  after  a  pause,  looking 
at  him,  "You  're  most  awfully  splendid,  you  know 
—  to  be  so  generous,"  Miss  Blanchard  said.  The 
tribute  was  offered  with  extreme  directness,  but  it 
brought  to  Rowland's  sense  neither  delight  nor  con 
fusion.  He  had  heard  something  like  it,  and  yet  so 
unlike,  before;  he  suddenly  remembered  the  grave 
sincerity  with  which  Mary  Garland  had  told  him 
he  was  generous  while  he  strolled  with  her  in  the 
woods  on  the  day  of  Roderick's  picnic.  They  had 

122 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

pleased  him  then;  now  he  asked  Augusta  Blanchard 
if  she  would  n't  have  tea. 

When  the  two  ladies  withdrew  he  went  with  them 
to  their  conveyance.  Coming  back  to  the  drawing- 
room  he  paused  outside  the  open  door;  he  was 
struck  by  the  group  formed  by  the  three  men.  They 
were  engaged  in  discussion  of  the  so  admirable  Eve, 
and  the  author  of  the  figure  had  lifted  up  the  lamp 
and  was  showing  different  parts  of  it  to  his  com 
panions.  He  was  talking  with  the  confidence  that 
never  failed  and  yet  never  betrayed  him  —  the  lamp 
light  covered  his  head  and  face.  Rowland  stood 
looking  on,  for  the  group  appealed  to  him  by  its 
romantic  symbolism.  Roderick,  bearing  the  lamp 
and  glowing  in  its  radiant  circle,  seemed  the  beau 
tiful  image  of  a  genius  which  combined  sincerity 
with  power.  Gloriani,  with  his  head  on  one  side,  pull 
ing  his  long  moustache  like  a  genial  Mephistopheles 
and  looking  keenly  from  half-closed  eyes  at  the 
lighted  marble,  represented  art  with  a  mixed  motive, 
skill  unleavened  by  faith,  the  mere  base  maximum 
of  cleverness.  Poor  little  Singleton,  on  the  other 
side,  with  his  hands  behind  him,  his  head  thrown 
back  and  his  eyes  following  devoutly  the  course 
of  Roderick's  charming  extravagance,  might  pass 
for  an  embodiment  of  aspiring  candour  afflicted 
with  feebleness  of  wing.  In  all  this  Roderick's  was 
certainly  the  beau  role. 

Gloriani  turned  to  Rowland  as  he  came  up;  he 
pointed  back  with  his  thumb  to  the  statue,  his  smile 
half  sardonic  and  half  sympathetic.  "A  pretty 
thing  —  a  devilish  pretty  thing.  It  's  as  fresh  as 

123 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  foam  in  the  milk-pail.  He  can  do  it  once,  he 
can  do  it  twice,  he  can  do  it  at  a  stretch  half  a  dozen 
times.  But  —  but  —  !" 

He  was  returning  to  his  former  refrain;  Rowland 
intercepted  him.  "Oh,  he  '11  keep  it  up — you  see 
I  'm  here  to  make  him!" 

Gloriani  had  obviously  a  high  vision  of  his  own 
consistency,  and  he  liked  interesting  young  men 
to  be  consistent  with  that.  Roderick  had  taken  this 
in  with  his  bright  clear  face;  he  was  floating  on  the 
tide  of  his  happy  magniloquence.  Now,  suddenly, 
however,  he  turned  with  a  flash  of  irritation  in  his 
eye  and  demanded  in  a  ringing  voice:  "In  a  word 
then  you  prophesy  that  I  shall  fizzle  out  ?" 

Gloriani  answered  imperturbably,  patting  him 
kindly  on  the  shoulder.  "My  dear  fellow,  passion 
burns  out,  inspiration  runs  to  seed.  Some  fine  day 
every  artist  finds  himself  sitting  face  to  face  with 
his  lump  of  clay,  with  his  empty  canvas,  with  his 
sheet  of  blank  paper,  waiting  in  vain  for  the  re 
velation  to  be  made,  for  the  Muse  to  descend.  He 
must  learn  to  do  without  the  Muse !  When  the  fickle 
jade  forgets  the  way  to  your  studio,  don't  waste  any 
time  in  tearing  your  hair  and  meditating  on  suicide. 
Come  round  and  see  me,  and  I  '11  show  you  how 
to  console  yourself." 

"If  I  break  down,"  said  Roderick  passionately, 
"I  shall  stay  down.  If  the  Muse  deserts  me  she 
shall  at  least  have  her  infidelity  on  her  conscience." 

"You  've  no  business,"  Rowland  interposed  to 
Gloriani,  "to  talk  lightly  of  the  Muse  in  this  com 
pany.  Mr.  Singleton  too  has  received  pledges  from 

124 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

her  which  place  her  constancy  beyond  suspicion.'* 
And  he  pointed  out  on  the  wall,  near  by,  two  small 
landscapes  by  the  modest  water-colourist. 

The  sculptor  examined  them  with  deference, 
and  Singleton  himself  began  to  laugh  nervously; 
he  was  all  active  with  hope  that  the  great  Gloriani 
would  be  pleased.  "Yes,  these  are  fresh  too," 
Gloriani  said;  "extraordinarily  fresh.  How  old  are 
you?" 

"Twenty-six,  sir,"  said  Singleton. 

"  For  twenty-six  they  're  famously  fresh.  They 
must  have  taken  you  a  long  time;  you  work  slowly." 

"Yes,  unfortunately  I  work  very  slowly.  One  of 
them  took  me  six  weeks,  the  other  two  months." 

"Upon  my  word  the  Muse  pays  you  long  visits." 
And  Gloriani  turned  and  looked  from  head  to  foot 
at  so  unlikely  an  object  of  her  favours.  Singleton 
smiled  and  began  to  wipe  his  forehead  very  hard. 
"Oh, you,"  said  the  sculptor  —  "you  '11  keep  it  up!" 

A  week  after  his  dinner  Rowland  went  into 
Roderick's  studio  and  found  him  sitting  before  an 
unfinished  piece  of  work  with  his  head  in  his  hands. 
He  might  have  fancied  that  the  fatal  hour  foretold 
by  Gloriani  had  already  of  a  sudden  struck.  Rod 
erick  rose  with  sombre  decision,  flinging  down  his 
tools.  "It  's  no  use,"  he  said;  "I  give  it  up!" 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"I  've  struck  a  shallow!  I  was  sailing,  as  you  may 
have  seen,  before  as  stiff  a  breeze  as  ever  was.  But 
for  the  last  day  or  two  my  keel  has  taken  to  grinding 
the  bottom." 

"You  've  come  upon  a  difficult  bit?"  Rowland 

125 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

asked  with  a  sympathetic  inflexion  and  looking 
vaguely  at  the  roughly-modelled  figure. 

"Oh,  it 's  all  difficult  bits!  But  it  's  not  the  poor 
old  clay.  The  difficult  bit  is  here!  "  And  Roderick 
struck  a  blow  on  his  heart.  "I  don't  know  what  's 
the  matter  with  me.  Nothing  comes;  all  of  a  sudden 
I  hate  things.  My  old  things  look  ugly;  everything 
looks  asinine." 

Rowland  was  at  first,  but  only  at  first,  disconcerted. 
He  was  in  the  situation  of  a  man  who  had  been  ricl- 
ing  a  blood-horse  at  a  steady  elastic  gallop  and  of  a 
sudden  felt  him  stumble  or  shy.  But  he  bethought 
himself  that  if  half  the  "lift"  of  intercourse  with 
Roderick  was  his  having  fine  nerves  he  himself 
had  no  right  to  enjoy  the  play  of  the  machine  — 
which  was  quite  definitely  what  he  did  enjoy  — 
without  some  corresponding  care  for  it  and  worry 
about  it.  He  immediately  recognised  the  present 
hour  as  the  very  ground  of  his  original  act.  He 
saw  why  he  had  risked  it;  he  felt  a  flood  of  com 
radeship  rise  in  his  heart  which  would  float  them 
both  safely  through  the  worst  weather.  "Ah,  you  're 
simply  tired.  Of  course  you  're  awfully  tired,"  he 
said.  "You  've  a  right  to  be  awfully  tired." 

"Do  you  think  I  've  a  right  to  be  awfully  tired  ?" 
Roderick  looked  at  him  rather  wanly  askance. 

"Unquestionably,  after  all  you  've  done." 

"Well,  then,  right  or  wrong,  I  am  dog-tired.  I 
really  must  have  done  a  fair  winter's  work.  I  want 
a  big  change." 

Rowland  declared  that  it  was  certainly  high  time 
they  should  have  a  big  change,  time  they  should 

126 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

be  leaving  Rome.  They  would  go  north  and  travel. 
They  would  go  to  Switzerland,  to  Germany,  to 
Holland,  to  England.  Roderick  assented,  his  eye 
brightened,  and  Rowland  talked  of  a  dozen  things 
they  might  do.  Roderick  walked  up  and  down  ; 
he  seemed  to  have  something  to  say  which  he  hesi 
tated  to  bring  out.  He  hesitated  so  rarely  that 
Rowland  wondered  and  at  last  asked  him  what  was 
on  his  mind.  Roderick  stopped  before  him,  frown 
ing  a  little. 

"I  've  such  unbounded  faith  in  your  extraor 
dinary  nature,"  he  said,  "that  I  believe  nothing 
I  could  ever  say  would  ever  offend  you." 

"Well,  try!" 

" Dunque"  Roderick  continued,  "I  think  my 
journey  will  do  me  more  good  if  I  take  it  alone. 
I  need  n't  say  I  prefer  your  society  to  that  of  any 
man  living.  For  the  last  six  months  it  has  been 
a  fund  of  comfort.  But  I  've  a  feeling  that  you  're 
always  expecting  something  of  me,  that  you  're 
measuring  my  doings  by  a  terrifically  high  stand 
ard.  You  're  watching  me,  my  dear  fellow,  as  my 
mother  at  home  watches  the  tea-kettle  she  has  set 
to  boil,  and  the  case  is  that  somehow  I  don't  want 
to  be  watched.  I  want  to  go  my  own  way;  to  work 
when  I  choose  and  to  be  a  fool,  to  be  even  a  wretch, 
when  I  choose,  and  the  biggest  kind  of  either  if 
necessary.  It 's  not  that  I  don't  know  what  I  owe 
you;  it 's  not  that  we  're  not  the  best  friends  in  the 
world.  It  's  simply  —  it  's  simply  — !" 

"It  's  simply  that  I  bore  you,"  said  Rowland. 

Roderick  sounded  his  eyes  to  a  depth  that  almost 

127 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

hurt  him.  It  was  as  if  he  were  probing  for  safety. 
Well,  he  should  have  it.  Rowland  met  this  long 
look,  and  then  his  friend  laughed.  "Go  and  amuse 
yourself  better  too!" 

Rowland  grasped  him  by  the  hand.  "  I  '11  do 
exactly  what  you  desire.  I  shall  miss  you,  I  need  n't 
assure  you,  and  I  dare  say  you  '11  occasionally  give 
a  howl,  even,  for  me.  But  I  've  only  one  request 
to  make  —  that  if  you  get  into  trouble  of  any  kind 
whatever  you  '11  immediately  let  me  know." 

They  began  their  journey,  however,  together, 
crossing  the  Alps  side  by  side,  muffled  in  one  rug, 
on  the  top  of  the  Saint-Gothard  coach.  Rowland 
was  going  to  England  to  pay  some  promised  visits; 
his  companion  had  no  plan  save  to  ramble  through 
Switzerland  and  Germany  as  fancy  should  guide 
him.  He  had  money  that  would  outlast  the  summer; 
when  it  was  spent  he  would  come  back  to  Rome 
and  find  the  golden  mood  again  awaiting  him  there. 
At  a  little  mountain  village  by  the  way  Roderick 
declared  that  he  would  stop;  he  would  scramble 
about  a  little  in  the  high  places  and  doze  in  the 
shade  of  the  pine-forests.  The  coach  was  changing 
horses;  the  two  young  men  walked  along  the  village 
street,  picking  their  way  between  dunghills,  breath 
ing  the  light  cool  air  and  listening  to  the  plash  of 
the  fountain  and  the  tinkle  of  cattle-bells.  The 
coach  overtook  them,  and  then  Rowland,  as  he 
prepared  to  mount,  felt  an  almost  overmastering 
reluctance. 

"Say  the  word,"  he  exclaimed,  "and  I  '11  stay  with 
you." 

128 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Roderick  looked  almost  black.  "Ah,  that  shows 
you  don't  really  believe  in  me  —  as  distinguished  from 
believing  in  yourself." 

Poor  Rowland  flushed,  hesitating  but  an  in 
stant.  "Yes,  I  'm  afraid  there  's  no  doubt  I  do  be 
lieve,  where  you  are  concerned,  in  myself.  But  'go 
it'  then,  and  buon  divertimento.  Good-bye!"  Stand 
ing  in  his  place  as  the  coach  rolled  away,  he  looked 
back  at  his  friend  lingering  by  the  roadside.  A  great 
snow  mountain  behind  Roderick  was  beginning  to 
turn  pink  in  the  sunset.  The  slim  and  straight  young 
figure  waved  its  hat  with  a  sort  of  mocking  solem 
nity.  Rowland  settled  himself  in  his  place,  reflect 
ing,  after  all,  that  this  was  a  salubrious  beginning 
of  independence.  Roderick  was  among  forests  and 
glaciers,  leaning  on  the  pure  bosom  of  nature.  And 
then  —  and  then  —  was  it  not  in  itself  a  guarantee 
against  folly  to  be  engaged  to  Mary  Garland  ? 


VII 


ROWLAND  passed  the  summer  in  England,  staying 
with  several  old  friends  and  two  or  three  new.  On 
his  arrival  he  had  it  on  his  conscience  to  write  to 
Mrs.  Hudson  and  inform  her  that  her  son  had  re 
lieved  him  of  his  tutelage.  He  felt  that  she  thought 
of  him  as  an  incorruptible  Mentor,  following  Rod 
erick  like  a  shadow,  and  he  wished  to  let  her  know 
the  truth.  But  he  made  the  truth  very  comfortable 
and  gave  a  detailed  account  of  the  young  man's 
brilliant  beginnings.  He  owed  it  to  himself,  he  said, 
to  remind  her  that  he  had  not  reasoned  amiss,  and 
that  Roderick's  present  achievements  were  more 
profitable  than  his  inglorious  drudgery  at  Messrs. 
Striker  and  Spooner's.  He  was  now  taking  a  well- 
earned  holiday  and  proposing  to  see  a  little  of  the 
world.  He  would  work  none  the  worse  for  this;  every 
artist  needed  to  take  chances  and  seek  impressions 
for  himself.  They  had  parted  company  for  a  couple 
of  months,  as  Roderick  was  now  a  great  man  and 
beyond  the  need  of  going  about  with  a  keeper.  But 
they  were  to  meet  again  in  Rome  in  the  autumn,  and 
then  he  should  be  able  to  send  her  more  good  news. 
Meanwhile  he  was  very  happy  in  what  Roderick  had 
already  done  —  especially  happy  in  the  happiness  it 
must  have  brought  his  mother.  He  ventured  to  ask 
to  be  kindly  commended  to  Miss  Garland. 

His  letter  was  promptly  answered  —  to  his  sur 
prise  in  the  hand  of  the  latter  lady.    The  same  post 

130 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

brought  also  an  epistle  from  Cecilia.  The  docu 
ment  was  voluminous,  and  we  must  content  our 
selves  with  giving  an  extract. 

"Your  letter  was  filled  with  an  echo  of  that  bril 
liant  Roman  world  which  made  me  almost  ill  with 
envy.  For  a  week  after  I  got  it  I  thought  North 
ampton  quite  too  abysmally  flat.  But  I  am  drifting 
back  again  to  my  old  deeps  of  resignation,  and  I  rush 
to  the  window  when  any  one  passes  with  all  my  old 
gratitude  for  small  favours.  So  Roderick  Hudson 
is  already  a  great  man,  and  you  turn  out  to  be  a 
great  prophet?  My  compliments  to  both  of  you; 
I  never  saw  a  trick  so  prettily  played!  And  he  takes 
it  all  very  quietly  and  does  n't  lose  his  balance 
nor  let  it  turn  his  head  ?  You  judged  him  then  in 
a  day  better  than  I  had  done  in  six  months,  for  I 
really  never  expected  he  would  behave  so  properly. 
I  believed  he  would  do  fine  things,  but  I  was  sure 
he  would  intersperse  them  with  a  good  many  follies, 
and  that  his  beautiful  statues  would  spring  up  out 
of  the  midst  of  a  dense  plantation  of  wild  oats.  But 
from  what  you  tell  me  Mr.  Striker  may  now  go 
hang  himself.  .  .  .  There  is  one  thing,  however, 
to  tell  you  as  a  friend  and  in  the  way  of  warning. 
That  candid  soul  can  keep  a  secret,  and  he  may 
have  private  designs  on  your  peace  of  mind.  What 
do  you  think  of  his  being  engaged  to  marry  Mary 
Garland  ?  The  two  ladies  had  given  no  hint  of  it 
all  winter,  but  a  fortnight  ago,  when  those  big 
photographs  of  his  statues  arrived,  they  first  pinned 
them  up  on  the  wall  and  then  trotted  out  into  the 
town  and  made  a  dozen  calls,  announcing  the  great 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

news.  Mrs.  Hudson  did,  at  least;  the  young  woman 
herself,  I  suppose,  sat  at  home  writing  letters.  To 
me,  I  confess,  the  thing  was  a  brutal  surprise.  I 
had  not  a  suspicion  that  all  the  while  he  was  coming 
so  regularly  to  make  himself  agreeable  on  my  veran 
dah  he  was  quietly  preferring  his  queer  cousin  to  all 
of  us.  Not  indeed  that  he  was  ever  at  particular 
pains  to  suggest  he  preferred  me!  I  suppose  he  has 
picked  up  a  few  graces  in  your  wonderful  Rome. 
He  must  not  pick  up  too  many;  if  he's  too  possible 
when  he  comes  back  the  young  woman  will  count 
him  as  one  of  the  lost.  She  will  be  a  very  good  wife 
for  a  man  of  genius,  and  such  a  one  as  they  are 
often  shrewd  enough  to  take.  She  will  darn  his 
stockings  and  keep  his  accounts,  she  will  sit  at  home 
and  trim  the  lamp  and  keep  up  the  fire,  while  he 
studies  the  Beautiful  in  pretty  neighbours  at  dinner 
parties.  The  two  ladies  are  evidently  very  happy 
and,  to  do  them  justice,  very  humbly  grateful  to  you. 
Mrs.  Hudson  never  speaks  of  you  without  tears  in 
her  eyes,  and  I  'm  sure  she  regards  you  as  our  lead 
ing  philanthropist.  Verily,  it  's  a  good  thing  for  a 
woman  to  be  in  love;  Mary  Garland  has  grown  dis 
tinctly  less  plain.  I  met  her  the  other  night  at  a  tea- 
party;  she  had  a  white  rose  in  her  hair  and  sang  a 
sentimental  ballad  in  a  fine  contralto  voice." 

Mary  Garland's  letter  was  so  much  shorter  that 
we  may  give  it  entire. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  Mrs.  Hudson,  as  I  suppose 
you  know,  has  been  for  some  time  unable  to  use  her 
eyes.  She  requests  me  therefore  to  answer  your 

132 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

beautiful  letter  of  the  22d  of  June.  She  thanks  you 
extremely  for  writing  and  wishes  me  to  say  that 
she  finds  herself  under  great  obligations  to  you. 
Your  account  of  her  son's  progress  and  of  the  high 
esteem  in  which  he  is  held  has  made  her  very  happy, 
and  she  earnestly  prays  that  all  may  go  on  well. 
He  sent  us  a  short  time  ago  several  large  photographs 
of  his  two  statues,  taken  from  different  points  of 
view.  We  know  little  about  such  things,  but  they 
seem  to  us  wonderfully  beautiful.  We  sent  them 
to  Boston  to  be  handsomely  framed,  and  the  man, 
on  returning  them,  wrote  us  that  he  had  exhibited 
them  for  a  week  in  his  gallery  and  that  they  had 
attracted  great  attention.  The  frames  are  magni 
ficent,  and  the  pictures  now  hang  in  a  row  on  the 
parlour  wall.  Our  only  quarrel  with  them  is  that 
they  make  the  old  papering  and  the  engravings 
look  dreadfully  shabby.  Mr.  Striker  stood  and 
looked  at  them  the  other  day  full  five  minutes;  after 
which  he  said  that  if  Roderick's  head  had  been 
running  on  such  things  as  those  it  was  no  wonder 
he  couldn't  learn  to  draw  a  deed.  We  lead  here  so 
quiet  and  monotonous  a  life  that  I  am  afraid  I  can 
tell  you  nothing  that  will  interest  you.  Mrs.  Hudson 
requests  me  to  say  that  the  little  that  might  happen 
to  us  —  more  or  less  —  is  of  small  importance,  as 
we  live  in  our  thoughts,  which  are  fixed  on  her  dear 
son.  She  thanks  heaven  he  has  so  good  a  friend. 
Mrs.  Hudson  says  that  this  is  too  short  a  letter,  but 
I  can  say  nothing  more. 

Yours  most  respectfully, 

MARY  GARLAND. 

133 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

It  is  a  question  if  the  reader  will  know  why,  but 
this  letter  gave  Rowland  extraordinary  pleasure. 
He  liked  its  shortness,  almost  its  dryness,  and  there 
seemed  to  him  an  exquisite  modesty  in  its  saying 
nothing  from  the  girl  herself.  He  delighted  in  the 
formal  address  and  conclusion;  they  pleased  him 
as  he  had  been  pleased  by  the  angular  gesture  of 
some  maiden-saint  in  a  primitive  painting.  The 
whole  thing  quickened  that  impression  of  fine  feel 
ing  combined  with  an  almost  rigid  simplicity  which 
Roderick's  betrothed  had  personally  given  him. 
Its  homely  stiffness  showed  as  the  direct  reflexion 
of  a  life  concentrated,  as  the  writer  had  borrowed 
warrant  from  her  companion  to  say,  in  a  single 
devoted  idea.  The  monotonous  days  of  the  two 
women  seemed  to  Rowland's  fancy  to  follow  each 
other  like  the  tick-tick  of  a  great  time-piece  mark 
ing  off  the  hours  which  separated  them  from  the 
supreme  felicity  of  clasping  the  far-away  son  and 
lover  to  lips  sealed  with  the  intensity  of  joy. 

He  was  left  to  vain  conjectures,  however,  as  to 
Roderick's  own  state  of  mind.  He  knew  his  absent 
friend  had  scant  patience  for  the  pen  and  would 
at  any  time,  in  his  own  phrase,  rather  design  a 
tomb  than  answer  a  note.  But  when  a  month  had 
passed  without  news  he  began  to  be  half  anxious 
and  half  angry,  and  addressed  the  young  sculptor 
three  lines,  in  care  of  a  Continental  banker,  beg 
ging  him  at  least  to  give  some  sign  of  life.  A  week 
afterwards  came  an  answer  —  brief  and  dated 
Baden-Baden.  "I  know  I've  been  a  great  brute," 
Roderick  wrote,  "not  to  have  sent  you  a  word  before; 

134 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

but  really  I  don't  know  what  has  got  into  me.  I  've 
lately  learned  terribly  well  how  to  do  nothing.  I  'm 
afraid  to  think  how  long  it  is  since  I  wrote  to  my 
mother  or  to  Mary.  Heaven  help  them  —  poor 
patient  trustful  creatures!  I  don't  know  how  to 
tell  you  what  I  am  doing  or  not  doing.  It  seems 
all  amusing  enough  while  it  lasts,  but  it  would 
make  a  poor  show  as  an  apology  and  a  still  poorer 
as  a  boast.  I  found  Baxter  in  Switzerland,  or  rather 
he  found  me,  and  he  grabbed  me  by  the  arm  and 
brought  me  here.  I  was  walking  twenty  miles  a 
day  in  the  Alps,  drinking  milk  in  lonely  chalets, 
sleeping  as  you  sleep,  and  thinking  it  was  all  very 
good  fun;  but  Baxter  told  me  it  would  never  do, 
that  the  Alps  were  'damned  rot,'  that  Baden-Baden 
was  'the  cheese,'  and  that  if  I  knew  what  was  good 
for  me  I  would  come  along  with  him.  It  is  a  won 
derful  place  certainly,  though,  thank  the  Lord, 
Baxter  departed  last  week,  blaspheming  horribly 
at  trente-et-quarante.  But  you  know  all  about  it, 
and  what  one  does  —  what  one  is  liable  to  do.  I  've 
succumbed,  in  a  measure,  to  the  liabilities,  and  I 
wish  I  had  some  one  here  to  give  me  a  kicking. 
Not  you  —  you  would  kick  me  with  your  boots 
off;  you  're  too  generous  ever  to  do  me  any  real 
good.  What  do  you  think  of  that  for  thanks  ?  I  Ve 
fits  of  horrible  homesickness  for  my  studio,  and  I 
shall  be  devoutly  grateful  when  the  summer  is 
over  and  I  can  go  back  and  potter  about  there.  I 
feel  as  if  nothing  but  the  chisel  and  a  sledgehammer 
would  satisfy  me;  as  if  in  fact  I  could  tear  a  figure 
straight  out  of  the  block  even  as  Michael  of  old. 

135 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

There  are  a  lot  of  Roman  people  here,  English  and 
American;  I  live  in  the  midst  of  them  and  talk 
nonsense  from  morning  till  night.  There  's  also 
some  one  else;  and  to  her  I  don't  talk  sense,  nor, 
thank  goodness,  mean  what  I  say.  I  confess  I  need 
a  month's  work  to  take  out  of  my  mouth  the  taste 
of  so  many  lies." 

These  lines  brought  Rowland  a  due  perturba 
tion;  the  more  that  what  they  seemed  to  point  to 
surprised  him.  During  the  long  stretch  of  their 
comradeship  Roderick  had  shown  so  little  impa 
tience  to  see  what  was  vulgarly  called  life  that  he 
had  come  to  think  of  that  possibility  as  a  cancelled 
danger,  and  it  greatly  perplexed  him  to  learn  that 
his  friend  had  apparently  proved  so  pliant  to  op 
portunity.  But  Roderick's  allusions  were  ambiguous, 
and  it  was  possible  they  might  simply  mean  that 
he  was  out  of  humour  with  idleness  and  mere  per 
sonal  success  —  he  could  so  easily  have  so  much 
of  that  —  and  was  fretting  wholesomely  over  his 
absent  work.  It  was  a  very  good  thing  certainly  that 
tried  debauchery  should  so  particularly  not  lead 
him  on.  Nevertheless  the  letter  needed  to  Row 
land's  mind  a  key:  the  key  arrived  a  week  later. 
"In  common  charity,"  Roderick  wrote,  "lend  me 
a  hundred  pounds!  I  've  gambled  away  my  last 
franc  —  I  've  made  a  villainous  heap  of  debts. 
Send  me  the  money  first;  lecture  me  afterwards!" 
Rowland  sent  the  money  by  return  of  post;  then  he 
proceeded,  not  to  lecture,  but  to  think.  He  hung 
his  head  —  he  was  acutely  disappointed.  He  had 
no  right  to  be,  he  assured  himself;  but  so  it  was. 

136 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Roderick  was  young,  impulsive,  unpractised  in 
stoicism;  it  was  a  hundred  to  one  that  he  was  to 
pay  the  usual  vulgar  tribute  to  folly.  But  his  friend 
had  regarded  it  as  securely  gained  to  his  own  belief 
in  virtue  that  he  was  not  as  other  foolish  youths 
are,  and  that  he  would  have  been  capable  of  look 
ing  Folly  in  the  face,  for  all  her  bells,  and  passing  on 
his  way.  Rowland  for  a  while  felt  a  sore  sense  of 
wrath.  What  right  had  a  man  who  was  engaged 
to  that  delightful  girl  in  Northampton  to  behave 
as  if  his  consciousness  were  a  common  blank,  to 
be  filled  in  with  coarse  sensations  ?  Yes,  distinctly, 
he  had  lost  an  illusion,  an  illusion  that  he  had  loved. 
He  had  accompanied  his  missive  with  an  urgent 
recommendation  that  Baden-Baden  should  immedi 
ately  be  quitted,  and  with  an  offer  to  meet  the  young 
traveller  at  any  point  the  latter  might  name.  The 
answer  came  promptly;  it  ran  as  follows:  "Send 
me  another  fifty  pounds!  I  'm  a  bigger  donkey  than 
ever.  I  will  leave  as  soon  as  the  money  comes, 
and  meet  you  at  Geneva.  There  I  will  tell  you 
everything." 

There  is  an  ancient  terrace  at  Geneva,  planted 
with  trees  and  studded  with  benches,  overlooked 
by  stately  houses  and  overlooking  the  distant  Alps. 
A  great  many  generations  have  made  it  a  lounging 
place,  a  great  many  friends  and  lovers  strolled  there, 
a  great  many  confidential  talks  and  momentous 
interviews  gone  forward.  Here  one  morning,  sit 
ting  on  one  of  the  battered  green  benches,  Roder 
ick,  as  he  had  promised,  told  his  friend  everything. 
He  had  arrived  the  previous  evening  ;  he  looked 

137 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

like  the  battered  knight  who  yet  sports  a  taller  plume. 
He  made  no  professions  of  penitence,  but  he  prac 
tised  an  unmitigated  frankness,  and  his  remorse 
might  be  taken  for  granted.  He  conveyed  in  every 
phrase  that  he  had  done  with  the  flesh  and  the  devil 
and  was  counting  the  hours  till  he  should  re-enter 
the  true  temple  of  his  faith.  We  shall  not  rehearse 
his  confession  in  detail;  its  main  outline  serves 
our  turn.  He  had  fallen  in  with  people  who  really 
knew  how  to  be  low — which  he,  poor  wretch,  did  n't, 
only  he  had  thought  it,  in  their  company,  a  trick  to 
be  learnt.  What  could  he  do  ?  He  never  read 
books  and  he  had  no  studio;  in  one  way  or  an 
other  he  had  to  pass  the  time.  He  passed  it  in  dang 
ling  about  several  very  pretty  women  and  reflecting 
that  it  was  always  something  gained  for  a  sculptor 
to  sit  under  a  tree  looking  at  his  leisure  into  a 
charming  face  and  saying  things  that  made  it  smile 
and  play  its  muscles  and  part  its  lips  and  show  its 
teeth.  Attached  to  these  ladies  were  gentlemen 
with  wonderful  names,  polyglot  ambrosial  gentle 
men  who  walked  about  in  clouds  of  fragrance, 
called  him  mon  cher,  sat  at  roulette  all  night  and 
supped  the  next  morning.  Roderick  had  found 
himself  in  the  mood  for  thinking  them  types  of  a 
high,  even  if  a  somewhat  spent,  civilisation.  He  was 
surprised  at  his  curiosity,  but  he  let  it  take  its  course. 
It  led  him  to  the  discovery  that  to  live  with  ladies 
almost  crudely  on  the  lookout  for  mementos  of 
friendship,  even  if  in  no  more  permanent  form  than 
that  of  expensive  bouquets  and  of  bushels  of  bonbons, 
and  for  rides  in  the  Black  Forest  on  shining  hired 

138 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

horses,  who  expected  a  fellow,  further,  to  arrange 
parties  for  the  opera  on  nights  when  Patti  sang 
and  the  prices  were  consequent,  to  propose  light 
suppers  at  the  Kursaal  or  drives  by  moonlight  to 
the  Castle,  to  be  always  arrayed  and  anointed  and 
under  arms  for  their  service  —  that  to  move  in  such 
society,  we  say,  though  it  might  be  a  privilege,  was 
a  privilege  with  a  penalty  attached.  But  the  tables 
made  such  things  easy;  half  the  Baden  world  lived 
by  the  tables.  Roderick  tried  them,  and  found  them 
at  first  a  wonderful  help.  The  help,  however,  was 
all  fallacious,  for  he  soon  perceived  that  to  seem 
to  have  money,  and  to  have  it  in  fact,  exposed  an 
eager  and  confident  youth  to  peculiar  liabilities.  As 
his  friend's  narrative  sailed  closer  Rowland  was 
reminded  of  Madame  de  Cruchecassee  in  Thack 
eray's  novel,  but  of  a  Madame  de  Cruchecassee 
mature  and  quasi-maternal,  attached  as  with  a 
horrible  sincerity  to  her  prey,  and  though  he  had 
listened  in  tranquil  silence  to  the  rest  of  it  he  found 
it  hard  not  to  say  that  all  this  had  been,  for  a  young 
man  in  his  particular  position,  about  as  gratuitous 
a  mistake  as  possible.  Roderick  admitted  it  with 
bitterness;  and  then  told  how  much  —  measured 
simply  in  vulgar  cash  —  the  mistake  had  cost  him. 
His  luck  had  changed,  the  tables  had  ceased  to 
back  him,  and  he  had  found  himself  up  to  his  knees 
in  debt.  Every  penny  had  gone  of  the  solid  sum 
which  had  seemed  a  large  equivalent  of  those 
shining  statues  in  Rome.  He  had  been  an  ass,  but 
it  was  not  irreparable;  he  could  make  another 
statue  in  a  couple  of  months. 

139 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  looked,  at  this,  conscientiously  blank. 
"For  God's  sake,"  he  said,  "don't  play  such  dan 
gerous  games  with  your  facility.  If  you've  got  facil 
ity,  respect  it,  nurse  it,  adore  it,  save  it  up  in  an  old 
stocking  —  don't  speculate  on  it."  And  he  won 
dered  what  his  companion,  up  to  his  knees  in  debt, 
would  have  done  if  there  had  been  no  good-natured 
Rowland  Mallet  to  lend  a  helping  hand.  But  he 
did  n't  express  his  curiosity  in  words,  and  the  con 
tingency  seemed  not  to  have  presented  itself  to 
Roderick's  imagination.  The  young  sculptor  re 
verted  to  his  late  adventures  again  in  the  evening, 
and  this  time  talked  of  them  more  objectively,  as 
the  phrase  is;  with  a  detachment  that  flowered 
little  by  little  into  free  anecdote  —  quite  as  if  they 
had  been  the  adventures  of  some  other,  some  dif 
ferent,  ass.  He  related  half  a  dozen  droll  things  that 
had  happened  to  him,  and,  as  if  his  responsibility 
had  been  disengaged  by  all  this  ventilation,  won 
dered,  with  laughter,  that  such  absurdities  could 
have  been.  Rowland  sat  perfectly  grave  —  he  kept 
it  up  on  principle.  Then  Roderick  began  to  talk  of 
half  a  dozen  plastic  ideas  that  he  had  in  his  head, 
and  set  them  forth  with  his  old  inimitable  touch. 
Suddenly,  as  it  was  relevant,  he  declared  that  his 
Baden  doings  had  not  been  altogether  fruitless, 
for  the  lady  who  had  reminded  Rowland  of  Madame 
de  Cruchecassee  had,  poor  dear,  in  her  make-up, 
some  wonderful,  beautiful  lines.  Rowland  at  last 
said  that  such  experiments  might  pass  if  one  felt 
one  was  really  the  wiser  for  them.  "  By  the  wiser," 
he  sententiously  added,  "I  mean  the  stronger  in 

140 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

reconsidered  and  confirmed  purpose,  in  acquired 
will-power." 

"Oh,  don't  talk  about  such  dreadful  things!" 
Roderick  answered,  throwing  back  his  head  and 
looking  at  the  stars.  This  conversation  also  took 
place  in  the  open  air,  on  the  little  island  in  the 
rushing  Rhone  where  Jean- Jacques,  himself  so  far 
from  remarkable  for  the  control  of  his  course,  is 
enthroned  in  bronze  as  the  genius  of  the  spot. 

"  The  will,  it  seems  to  me,  is  an  abyss  of  abysses 
and  a  riddle  of  riddles.  Who  can  answer  for  his  pro 
perly  having  one  ?  who  can  say  beforehand  that  it  's 
going  in  a  given  case  to  be  worth  anything  at  all  ? 
There  are  all  kinds  of  uncanny  underhand  currents 
moving  to  and  fro  between  one's  will  and  the  rest  of 
one  —  one's  imagination  in  particular.  People  talk 
as  if  the  two  things  were  essentially  distinct;  on  differ 
ent  sides  of  one's  organism,  like  the  heart  and  the 
liver.  Mine,  I  know  —  that  is  my  imagination  and 
my  conscience  —  are  much  nearer  together.  It 
all  depends  upon  circumstances.  I  believe  there  's 
a  certain  group  of  circumstances  possible  for  every 
man,  in  which  his  power  to  choose  is  destined  to 
snap  like  a  dry  twig." 

"My  dear  man,"  said  Rowland,  "don't  talk 
about  any  part  of  you  that  has  a  grain  of  character 
in  it  being  'destined.'  The  power  to  choose  is  des 
tiny.  That  's  the  way  to  look  at  it." 

"Look  at  it,  my  good  Rowland,"  Roderick  an 
swered,  "as  you  find  most  comfortable.  One  con 
viction  I  've  gathered  from  my  summer's  experi 
ence,"  he  went  on  —  "  it 's  as  well  to  look  it  frankly 

141 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  the  face  —  is  that  I  'm  damnably  susceptible, 
by  nature,  to  the  grace  and  the  beauty  and  the  mys 
tery  of  women,  to  their  power  to  turn  themselves 
'on'  as  creatures  of  subtlety  and  perversity.  So  there 
you  have  me." 

Rowland,  so  "  having "  him,  stared,  and  then 
strolled  away,  softly  whistling  to  himself.  He  was 
unwilling  to  admit  even  tacitly  that  this  speech 
had  really  the  ominous  meaning  it  seemed  to  have. 
In  a  few  days  the  two  young  men  made  their  way 
back  to  Italy  and  lingered  a  while  in  Florence  be 
fore  going  on  to  Rome.  In  Florence  Roderick 
appeared  to  have  recovered  his  old  innocence  and 
his  preference  for  the  pleasures  of  study.  Rowland 
began  to  think  of  the  Baden  episode  as  a  bad  dream, 
or  at  the  worst  one  of  the  plunges,  really  touching 
bottom,  that  the  plunger  with  the  brine  of  the  deep 
sea  in  his  mouth  doesn't  need,  or  never  has  wind 
again,  to  repeat.  They  passed  a  fortnight  looking 
at  pictures  and  exploring  for  out-of-the-way  rem 
nants  of  fresco  and  carving,  and  Roderick  exhib 
ited  all  his  earlier  energy  of  appreciation  and  criti 
cism.  In  Rome  he  went  almost  pompously  to  work, 
finishing  in  a  month  two  or  three  small  things  he 
had  left  standing  on  his  departure.  He  talked  the 
most  joyous  nonsense  about  finding  himself  back 
in  his  old  quarters.  On  the  first  Sunday  following 
their  return,  at  their  going  together  in  the  afternoon 
to  Saint  Peter's,  he  delivered  himself  of  a  mystic 
greeting  to  the  great  church,  and  to  the  city  in  gen 
eral,  in  a  manner  so  uplifted  that  his  voice  rang 
quite  publicly  through  the  nave  and  arrested  a 

142 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

procession  of  ecclesiastics  on  their  march  to  the  choir. 
He  began  to  model  a  new  image  —  a  female  figure 
of  which  he  had  said  nothing  to  Rowland.  It  repre 
sented  a  woman  leaning  lazily  back  in  her  chair, 
with  her  head  inclined  in  apparent  attention,  a 
vague  smile  on  her  lips  and  a  pair  of  remarkably 
beautiful  arms  folded  in  her  lap.  With  something 
less  of  its  emphasised  grace  it  would  have  recalled 
the  noble  statue  of  Agrippina  in  the  Capitol.  Row 
land  looked  at  it  and  was  not  sure  he  liked  it.  It 
differed  singularly  from  anything  his  friend  had  yet 
done.  "Who  is  it  ?  what  does  it  mean  ?"  he  asked. 

"Anything  you  please!"  said  Roderick  with  a 
certain  petulance.  "A  'Lady  conversing  affably 
with  a  Gentleman.' ' 

Rowland  then  remembered  that  one  of  the  Baden- 
Baden  conversers  had  had  wonderful  "lines,"  and 
here  perhaps  they  were.  But  he  asked  no  more 
questions.  This,  after  all,  was  a  way  of  profiting 
by  experience.  A  few  days  later  he  took  his  first 
ride  of  the  season  on  the  Campagna,  and  as  he  on 
his  homeward  canter  was  passing  across  the  long 
shadow  of  a  ruined  tower  he  perceived  a  small 
figure  at  a  short  distance  bent  over  a  sketch-book. 
As  he  drew  near  he  recognised  Sam  Singleton.  The 
honest  little  painter's  face  was  scorched  to  flame- 
colour  by  the  light  of  southern  suns,  and  borrowed 
an  even  deeper  crimson  from  his  gleeful  greeting 
of  his  most  appreciative  patron.  He  was  making 
a  careful  and  charming  sketch.  On  Rowland's 
asking  him  how  he  had  spent  his  summer  he  gave 
an  account  of  his  wanderings  which  made  our  poor 

H3 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

friend  sigh  with  a  sense  of  more  contrasts  than 
one.  He  had  not  been  out  of  Italy,  but  had  delved 
deep  into  the  historic  heart  of  the  lovely  land  and 
gathered  a  wonderful  store  of  subjects.  He  had 
rambled  about  among  the  unvisited  villages  of  the 
Apennines,  pencil  in  hand  and  knapsack  on  back, 
sleeping  on  straw  and  eating  black  bread  and  beans, 
but  feasting  on  local  colour,  making  violent  love  to  op 
portunity  and  laying  up  a  treasure  of  reminiscences. 
He  took  a  devout  satisfaction  in  his  hard-earned 
results  and  his  successful  economy.  Rowland  went 
the  next  day  by  appointment  to  look  at  his  sketches, 
and  spent  a  whole  morning  turning  them  over. 
Singleton  talked  more  than  he  had  ever  done  before, 
explained  them  all,  and  told  some  honest  anec 
dote,  mainly  comical  and  at  the  expense  of  his 
knowledge  of  "  life,"  about  the  production  of  each. 

"Dear  me,  how  I've  chattered!"  he  finally  sighed. 
"I  'm  afraid  you  would  rather  have  looked  at  the 
things  in  peace  and  quiet.  I  did  n't  know  I  could 
talk  so  much.  But  somehow  I  feel  very  happy;  I 
feel  as  if  I  had  taken  a  kind  of  stride." 

"That  you  have,"  said  Rowland.  "  I  doubt  whether 
any  patient  worker  ever  took  a  longer  in  the  time. 
You  must  feel  much  more  sure  of  yourself." 

Singleton  looked  for  some  moments  with  great 
interest  at  a  knot  in  the  floor.  "Yes,"  he  ventured 
at  last  to  acknowledge,  "I  feel  much  more  sure  of 
myself.  I  know  better  what  I  'm  about."  And  his 
voice  dropped  as  if  he  were  communicating  a  secret 
which  it  took  some  courage  to  impart.  "I  hardly 
like  to  say  it,  for  fear  I  should  after  all  be  mistaken. 

144 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

But  since  it  strikes  you,  perhaps  it 's  true.  It 's  a 
great  happiness;  I  would  n't  exchange  it  for  a  great 
deal  of  money." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  's  a  great  happiness,"  said 
Rowland.  "I  shall  really  think  of  you  as  living 
here  in  a  state  of  scandalous  bliss.  I  don't  feel  it  's 
quite  decent  for  an  artist  to  know  so  well  what  he  's 
about." 

Singleton  stared  a  moment,  as  if  he  supposed 
his  visitor  in  earnest;  then  with  a  vision  of  the  kindly 
jest  he  walked  about  the  room  agitating  his  head 
and  shyly  laughing.  "And  Mr.  Hudson  ?"  he  said  as 
Rowland  was  going;  "  I  hope  he  's  as  great  as  ever." 

"He  's  very  well  —  for  him.  He  's  back  at  work 
again." 

"Ah,  there  's  a  man,"  cried  Singleton,  "who  has 
taken  his  start  once  for  all  and  does  n't  need  to  stop 
and  ask  himself  in  fear  and  trembling  every  month 
or  two  whether  he  's  going  on.  When  he  stops  it  's 
to  rest!  And  where  did  he  spend  the  summer?" 

"The  greater  part  of  it  at  Baden-Baden." 

"Ah,  that 's  in  the  Black  Forest,"  cried  Single 
ton  with  profound  simplicity.  "They  say  you  can 
make  ripping  studies  of  trees  there." 

"No  doubt,"  said  Rowland  with  a  smile,  laying 
an  almost  paternal  hand  on  the  little  artist's  stoop 
ing  shoulders.  "Unhappily  trees  are  not  Roderick's 
line.  Nevertheless  he  tells  me  that  at  Baden  he  made 
some  studies  —  and  I  gather  that  they  were,  in  a 
manner,  ripping.  Come  when  you  can,  by  the  way," 
he  added  after  a  moment,  "to  his  studio,  and  tell  me 
what  you  think  of  something  he  has  lately  begun." 

145 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Singleton  declared  that  he  would  come  delight 
edly,  and  Rowland  left  him  at  his  work. 

He  met  a  number  of  his  last  winter's  friends  and 
found  that  Madame  Grandoni,  Miss  Blanchard  and 
Gloriani  had  again  taken  up  the  golden  thread  of 
Roman  life.  The  ladies  gave  an  excellent  account  of 
themselves:  Madame  Grandoni  had  been  taking  sea- 
baths  at  Rimini  and  Miss  Blanchard  painting  wild 
flowers  in  the  Tyrol.  Her  complexion  was  somewhat 
browned,  which  was  very  becoming,  and  her  flowers 
tossed  their  heads  and  rolled  their  eyes  like  so  many 
little  poetesses  looking  for  rhymes.  Gloriani  had  been 
in  Paris  and  had  come  away  in  high  good-humour, 
finding  no  one  there  in  the  artist-world  with  as  long 
a  head  as  his  own.  He  came  in  a  few  days  to  Rod 
erick's  studio,  one  afternoon  when  Rowland  was  pre 
sent.  He  examined  the  new  figure  with  great  defer 
ence,  pronounced  it  tremendously  trouve,  and  ab 
stained  considerably  from  irritating  prophecies.  But 
Rowland  fancied  he  observed  certain  signs  of  inward 
jubilation  on  the  subtle  sculptor's  part,  and  walked 
away  with  him  to  learn  his  private  opinion. 

"Certainly;  I  liked  it  as  well  as  I  said,"  Gloriani 
declared  in  answer  to  Rowland's  anxious  query;  "or 
rather  I  liked  it  a  great  deal  better.  I  did  n't  say 
how  much,  for  fear  of  making  your  friend  angry. 
But  one  can  leave  him  alone  now,  for  he  's  coming 
round.  I  told  you  he  could  n't  keep  up  that  flapping 
of  his  wings  in  the  blue,  and  he  has  already  come 
down  to  earth.  Don't  you  see  what  I  mean?" 

"I  don't  particularly  like  the  thing,  you  know," 
Rowland  confessed. 

146 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"That's  because  you  yourself  try  to  sit  like  an  angel 
on  a  cloud.  This  present  idea  of  Hudson's  is  full  of 
possibilities,  and  he  '11  pull  some  of  them  off ;  but 
it  is  n't  the  sancta  simplicitas  of  a  few  months  ago. 
He  has  taken  his  turn  sooner  than  I  supposed.  What 
has  happened  to  him  ?  Has  he  been  disappointed  in 
love  ?  But  that  's  none  of  my  business.  I  congratu 
late  him  on  having  found  his  feet  —  or  at  least  found 
such  a  smart  pair  of  shoes." 

Roderick,  however,  was  less  to  be  congratulated 
than  Gloriani  had  taken  it  into  his  head  to  believe.  He 
was  discontented  with  his  work,  he  applied  himself 
to  it  by  fits  and  starts,  he  declared  that  he  did  n't 
know  what  was  in  store  for  him;  he  was  turning 
into  a  man  of  moods.  "Is  this  of  necessity  what  a 
fellow  must  come  to  ?"  he  asked  of  Rowland  with  a 
peremptory  flash  in  his  eye,  a  look  seeming  to  imply 
that  his  companion  had  undertaken  to  insure  him 
against  perplexities  and  was  not  fulfilling  his  contract 
—  "this  damnable  uncertainty  when  one  goes  to  bed 
at  night  as  to  whether  one  is  going  to  wake  up  in  an 
ecstasy  or  in  a  tantrum  ?  Have  we  only  a  season,  over 
before  we  know  it,  in  which  to  call  our  faculties  our 
own  ?  Six  months  ago  I  could  stand  up  to  my  work 
like  a  man,  day  after  day,  and  never  dream  of  asking 
myself  how  I  felt.  But  now,  some  mornings,  it  's  the 
very  devil  to  get  going.  My  experiment  looks  so  base 
when  I  come  into  the  studio  that  I  've  twenty  minds 
to  smash  it  on  the  spot,  and  I  lose  three  or  four  hours 
in  sitting  there  moping  and  getting  used  to  it." 

Rowland  said  that  he  supposed  that  these  changes 
of  intellectual  weather,  these  occasional  obscurations 

147 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  the  mere  staring  sun  were  the  lot  of  every  poet  — 
and  what  was  the  sculptor  but  the  poet  of  the  corpo 
real  ?  So  that  the  only  remedy  was  plenty  of  courage 
and  faith.  And  he  reminded  him,  with  a  rare  failure 
of  tact  perhaps,  of  Gloriani's  having  forewarned  him 
the  year  before  against  the  apparent  lapse  of  the  mere 
"inspired"  state. 

"Gloriani's  a  murderous  mountebank!"  Roderick 
fiercely  replied.  "He  has  got  a  bag  of  tricks  and  he 
comes  with  it  to  his  studio  as  a  conjurer  comes  for 
twenty  francs  to  a  children's  party.  Faugh!"  He 
hired  a  horse,  and  began  to  ride  with  Rowland  on  the 
Campagna.  This  admirable  exercise  restored  him  in 
a  measure  to  the  appearance  of  felicity,  but  it  seemed 
to  Rowland  on  the  whole  not  to  stimulate  his  dili 
gence.  Their  rides  were  always  drawn  out,  and  Rod 
erick  insisted  on  making  them  longer  by  dismounting 
in  picturesque  spots  and  stretching  himself,  in  the 
golden  air,  on  some  mild  mass  of  over-tangled  stones. 
He  let  the  Roman  sky  smile  upon  him  with  an  inten 
sity  that  his  companion  found  more  embarrassing. 
But  in  this  situation  he  talked  so  much  amusing  non 
sense  that,  for  the  sake  of  his  company,  Rowland 
consented  to  risk  sunstroke  and  often  forgot  that, 
though  in  these  diversions  the  days  passed  quickly, 
they  produced  neither  the  art  of  the  market  nor  that 
of  the  temple.  And  yet  it  was  perhaps  by  their  help, 
after  all,  that  Roderick  secured  several  mornings  of 
ardent  work  on  his  new  figure  and  brought  it  forward 
in  three  or  four  bold  jumps.  One  afternoon  when  it 
was  practically  finished  Rowland  went  to  look  at  it, 
and  Roderick  asked  for  his  opinion. 

148 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"What  do  you  think  yourself  ?"  Rowland  demanded 

—  not  from  pusillanimity,  but  from  real  uncertainty. 
"I  think   it  curiously,  almost  interestingly  bad," 

Roderick  answered.  "It  was  false  from  the  first;  it 
has  fundamental  vices.  I  've  shuffled  them  out  of 
sight  by  a  hocus-pocus  for  which  I  blush,  but  I  haven't 
corrected  them.  I  can't  —  I  can't  —  I  can't!"  he 
cried  passionately.  "They  stare  me  in  the  face  — 
they  're  all  I  see!" 

Rowland  offered  several  criticisms  of  detail  and 
suggested  certain  practicable  changes.  But  Roder 
ick  differed  with  him  on  each  of  these  points;  the 
thing  had  faults  enough,  but  they  were  not  those 
faults.  Rowland,  unruffled,  concluded  by  saying  that 
whatever  its  faults  might  be,  he  had  an  idea  people 
in  general  would  admire  it. 

"  I  wish  to  heaven  some  person  in  particular  — 
but  not  you  again,  confound  you!"  Roderick  cried 

—  "would  buy  it  and  take  it  off  my  hands  and  out 
of  my  sight!    What  am  I  to  do  now  ?"  he  almost  im 
periously  went  on.     "I  haven't  a  blamed  idea.    I 
think  of  subjects,  but  they  remain  mere  idiotic  names. 
They  're  mere  words  —  they  're  not  images.     What 
am  I  to  do  ?" 

Rowland  was  a  trifle  annoyed.  "Be  a  man,"  he 
was  on  the  point  of  saying,  "and  don't,  for  heaven's 
sake,  talk  in  that  confoundedly  querulous  voice!" 
But  before  he  had  uttered  the  words  there  rang  through 
the  studio  a  loud  peremptory  ring  at  the  outer  door. 

Roderick  broke  into  a  laugh.  "Talk  of  the  devil 
and  you  see  his  horns!  If  that  's  not  a  customer,  for 
poetic  justice,  it  ought  to  be." 


VIII 

THE  door  of  the  studio  was  promptly  flung  open,  and 
a  lady  advanced  to  the  threshold  —  an  imposing 
voluminous  person  who  quite  filled  up  the  doorway. 
Rowland  immediately  felt  that  he  had  seen  her  before, 
but  he  recognised  her  only  when  she  moved  forward 
and  disclosed  an  attendant  in  the  person  of  a  little 
bright-eyed  elderly  gentleman  with  a  bristling  white 
moustache.  Then  he  remembered  that  just  a  year 
before  he  and  his  companion  had  seen  in  the  Ludovisi 
gardens  a  wonderfully  beautiful  girl  strolling  in  the 
train  of  this  conspicuous  couple.  He  looked  for  her 
now,  and  in  a  moment  she  appeared,  following  her 
companions  with  the  same  maidenly  majesty  as  be 
fore  and  leading  her  great  snow-white  poodle,  who 
was  decorated  as  before  with  motley  ribbons.  The 
elder  lady  offered  the  two  young  men  a  sufficiently 
gracious  salute;  the  little  old  gentleman  bowed  and 
smiled  with  extreme  deference.  The  young  girl,  with 
out  casting  a  glance  either  at  Roderick  or  at  Rowland, 
looked  about  for  a  chair  and,  on  perceiving  one,  sank 
into  it  listlessly,  pulled  her  poodle  towards  her  and 
began  to  re-arrange  his  top-knot.  Rowland  saw  that, 
even  with  her  eyes  dropped,  her  beauty  was  still 
dazzling. 

"  I  trust  we  're  at  liberty  to  enter,"  said  the  elder 
lady  with  urbanity.  "We  were  told  that  Mr.  Hudson 
has  no  fixed  jour  and  that  we  might  come  at  any  time. 
Let  us  not  disturb  you." 

150 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Roderick,  as  one  of  the  newer  lights  of  the  Roman 
art-world,  had  not  hitherto  been  subject  to  incur 
sions  from  inquisitive  tourists  and,  having  no  regu 
lar  reception-day,  was  not  versed  in  the  usual  arts 
of  hospitality.  He  said  nothing,  and  Rowland,  look 
ing  at  him,  saw  that  he  was  staring  amazedly  at  the 
younger  woman  and  was  apparently  unconscious  of 
everything  else.  "By  Jove!"  he  cried  precipitately, 
"it  's  that  goddess  of  the  Villa  Ludovisi!"  Rowland, 
in  some  confusion,  did  the  honours  as  he  could,  but 
the  little  old  gentleman  begged  him  with  the  most  ob 
sequious  of  smiles  to  give  himself  no  trouble.  "  I  've 
been  in  a  many  studio,  tanti,  tanti !  "  he  said  with 
his  finger  in  the  air  and  a  strong  Italian  accent. 

"We  're  going  about  everywhere,"  said  his  com 
panion.  "I  'm  passionately  fond  of  art!" 

Rowland  smiled  sympathetically  and  let  them  turn 
to  Roderick's  statue.  He  glanced  again  at  the  young 
sculptor,  to  invite  him  to  bestir  himself,  but  Roder 
ick  was  still  nothing  but  eyes  for  the  beautiful  young 
mistress  of  the  poodle,  who  by  this  time  had  looked 
up  and  was  gazing  straight  at  him.  There  was  no 
thing  bold  in  her  look;  it  expressed  but  the  reserve 
of  systematic  indifference.  Her  beauty  was  extraor 
dinary;  it  grew  and  grew  as  the  young  man  re 
garded  her.  In  such  a  face  the  maidenly  custom  of 
averted  eyes  and  ready  blushes  would  have  seemed 
an  anomaly;  nature  had  produced  it  for  man's  de 
light  and  meant  that  it  should  surrender  itself  freely 
and  coldly  to  admiration.  It  was  not  immediately 
apparent,  however,  that  the  young  lady  found  answer 
ing  entertainment  in  the  physiognomy  of  her  host; 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

she  turned  her  head  after  a  moment  and  looked  idly 
round  the  room,  and  at  last  let  her  eyes  rest  on  the 
statue  of  the  woman  seated.  It  being  left  to  Rowland 
to  stimulate  conversation,  he  began  by  compliment 
ing  her  on  the  appearance  of  her  dog. 

"  Yes,  he  's  very  handsome,"  she  murmured.  "  He 's 
a  Florentine.  The  dogs  in  Florence  are  handsomer 
than  the  people."  Then,  on  Rowland's  caressing 
him,  "His  name  's  Stenterello,"  she  added:  "Stente- 
rello,  give  your  hand  to  the  kind  gentleman."  This 
order  was  given  in  Italian.  "Say  buon  gwrno  a  Lei." 

Stenterello  thrust  out  his  paw  and  gave  four  short 
shrill  barks;  upon  which  the  elder  lady  turned  round 
and  raised  her  forefinger.  "My  dear,  my  dear,  re 
member  where  you  are!  Pardon  my  foolish  child,"  she 
added,  turning  to  Roderick  with  an  agreeable  smile. 
"She  can  think  of  nothing  but  her  funny  poodle." 

"I  'm  teaching  him  to  talk  for  me,"  the  girl  went 
on  without  heeding  her  mother;  "to  say  the  proper 
little  things  in  society.  It  will  save  me  a  great  deal 
of  trouble.  Stenterello,  love,  give  a  pretty  smile  and 
say  tanti  complimenti !"  The  poodle  wagged  his  white 
pate  —  it  looked  like  one  of  those  little  pads  in 
swan's-down  for  applying  powder  to  the  face  —  and 
repeated  the  barking  process. 

"He  's  surely  a  wonderful  beast,"  said  Rowland. 

"He  's  not  a  beast  at  all,"  the  animal's  mistress 
protested.  "A  beast  is  something  black  and  dirty  — 
something  you  can't  touch;  whereas  Stenterello 's 
a  perfect  gentleman,  with  all  the  personal  signs  and 
personal  habits  of  one.  I  've  seen  other  gentlemen 
whom  I  would  n't  trust  so  far." 

152 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"He  's  a  very  valuable  dog  indeed,"  the  elder  lady 
explained  as  a  commentary  to  this  striking  plea. 
"He  was  presented  to  my  daughter  by  a  great  Flor 
entine  personage." 

"It's  not  for  that  I  care  about  him.  It's  for 
himself.  He  's  a  great  Florentine  personage." 

"My  precious  love!"  exclaimed  the  mother  in  de 
precating  accents,  but  with  a  significant  glance  at 
Rowland  which  seemed  to  bespeak  his  attention  to 
the  originality  of  her  possessing  a  daughter  who  was 
herself  so  original. 

Rowland  remembered  that  when  their  unknown 
visitors  had  passed  before  them,  in  the  Villa  Ludo- 
visi,  with  an  effect  that  had  remained  oddly  distinct 
in  spite  of  the  many  revolving  seasons,  Roderick  and 
he  had  exchanged  conjectures  as  to  their  nationality 
and  social  quality.  Roderick  had  declared  that  they 
were  old-world  people;  but  Rowland  now  needed  no 
telling  to  feel  that  he  might  claim  the  elder  lady  as 
a  fellow-countrywoman.  She  was  a  person  of  what  is 
called  a  great  deal  of  presence,  with  the  faded  traces, 
artfully  revived  here  and  there,  of  once  brilliant 
beauty.  Her  young  companion  was  therefore  account 
ably  fair,  but  Rowland  mentally  made  the  distinction 
that  the  mother  was  inordinately  shallow  and  the 
daughter  —  also  perhaps  inordinately  —  deep.  The 
mother  had  a  fatuous  countenance  —  a  countenance 
Rowland  felt  himself  make  out  to  represent  a  fairly 
fantastic  fatuity.  The  girl,  in  spite  of  her  childish 
satisfaction  in  her  poodle,  was  not  a  person  of  a  feeble 
understanding.  Rowland  received  an  impression  that 
for  reasons  of  her  own  she  was  playing  a  part  before 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  world.  What  was  the  part  and  what  were  her 
reasons  ?  She  was  interesting;  Rowland  wondered 
what  were  her  domestic  secrets.  If  her  parent  had 
been  a  daughter  of  the  great  Republic  it  was  to  be 
supposed  that  she  herself  was  a  flower  of  the  American 
soil;  but  her  beauty  had,  in  spite  of  her  youth,  an  air 
of  longer  history  than  consorts,  in  general,  with  the 
rather  extemporised  look  of  American  loveliness.  She 
spoke  with  a  vague  foreign  accent,  as  if  she  had  spent 
her  life  in  strange  countries.  Their  Italian  squire 
apparently  divined  Rowland's  mute  imaginings,  for 
he  stepped  with  a  conciliatory  flourish  into  the 
breach.  "I've  not  done  my  duty,"  he  remarked, 
"in  not  announcing  these  ladies.  Madama  Light, 
Mees  Light!  " 

Rowland  was  not  materially  the  wiser  for  this 
information,  but  Roderick  was  roused  by  it  to  the 
exercise  of  some  slight  civility.  He  altered  the  light 
ing,  pulled  forward  two  or  three  figures  and  made  an 
apology  for  not  having  more  to  show.  "I  don't  pre 
tend  to  have  anything  of  an  exhibition  —  I  'm  only 
a  novice." 

"Indeed?  —  a  novice!  For  a  novice  this  will  cer 
tainly  pass,"  Mrs.  Light  declared.  "  Cavaliere,  we  Ve 
seen  nothing  better  than  this." 

The  Cavaliere  smiled  rapturously.  "It's  stupend 
ous!  "  he  murmured.  "And  we've  been  to  all  the 
studios." 

"Not  to  all  —  goodness  gracious!"  cried  Mrs. 
Light.  "  But  to  a  number  that  I  've  had  pointed  out 
by  artistic  friends.  I  delight  in  studios  —  I  should 
have  been  so  happy  myself  to  be  a  little  quiet  artist ! 

154 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

And  if  you  're  a  novice,  Mr.  Hudson,"  she  went  on, 
"you  've  already  great  admirers.  Half  a  dozen  people 
have  told  us  that  yours  were  quite  among  the  things 
to  see."  This  amiability,  however,  went  unanswered; 
Roderick  had  already  wandered  across  to  the  other 
side  of  the  studio  and  was  revolving  about  Miss  Light. 
"Ah,  he  's  gone  to  look  at  my  beautiful  daughter; 
he  's  not  the  first  that  has  had  his  head  turned,"  the 
irrepressible  lady  resumed,  lowering  her  voice  to  a 
confidential  undertone;  a  favour  which,  considering 
the  shortness  of  their  acquaintance,  Rowland  was 
bound  to  appreciate.  "The  artists  are  all  crazy  about 
her.  When  she  goes  into  a  studio  she  's  fatal  to  the 
pictures.  And  when  she  goes  into  the  ball-room  what 
do  the  other  women  say  ?  Eh,  Cavaliere  mio  ?" 

"  She  's  very  very  beautiful,"  Rowland  said  simply. 

Mrs.  Light,  who  through  her  long  gold-cased 
glasses  was  looking  a  little  at  everything  and  at  no 
thing  as  if  she  saw  it,  interrupted  her  random  mur 
murs  and  exclamations  and  surveyed  Rowland  from 
head  to  foot.  She  eyed  him  all  over;  apparently 
he  had  not  been  mentioned  to  her  as  a  feature  of 
Roderick's  establishment.  It  was  the  challenge, 
Rowland  felt,  which  the  vigilant  and  ambitious 
mother  of  a  beautiful  daughter  has  always  at  her 
command  for  well-appointed  young  men.  Her  in 
spection  in  this  case  seemed  satisfactory.  "Are  you 
also  an  artist?"  she  inquired  with  an  almost  affec 
tionate  inflexion.  It  was  clear  that  what  she  meant 
was  something  of  this  kind:  "  Be  so  good  as  to  assure 
me  without  delay  that  you  're  really  the  rather  man 
ageable  young  man  of  fortune  that  you  appear." 

'55 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

But  Rowland  answered  only  the  formal  question  — 
not  the  latent  one.  "Dear  me,  no;  I'm  merely  a 
poor  friend  of  Mr.  Hudson's." 

Mrs.  Light,  with  a  sigh,  returned  to  the  statues  and, 
after  mistaking  the  Adam  for  a  gladiator  and  the  Eve 
for  a  gypsy,  declared  she  could  never  judge  of  such 
things  unless  she  saw  them  in  the  marble.  Rowland 
hesitated  a  moment  and  then,  speaking  in  the  inter 
est  of  Roderick's  renown,  said  that  he  was  the  happy 
possessor  of  several  of  his  friend's  works  and  that  she 
was  welcome  to  come  and  see  them  at  his  rooms.  She 
bade  the  Cavaliere,  with  alacrity,  make  a  note  of  his 
address.  "Ah,  you  're,  for  your  pleasure,  a  protector 
of  the  arts,"  she  said.  "That's  what  I  should  like  to 
be  if  I  had  a  little  money.  I  revel  in  beauty  in  every 
form.  But  all  these  people  ask  such  monstrous  prices. 
One  must  be  a  millionaire  to  think  of  such  things,  eh  ? 
Twenty  years  ago  my  husband  had  my  portrait 
painted,  here  in  Rome,  by  Papucci,  who  was  the  great 
man  in  those  days.  I  was  in  a  ball-dress,  with  my 
famous  jewels  and  my  bare  shoulders  and  arms, 
which  were  then  rather  famous  too  —  were  not  at 
any  rate  a  petite  affaire.  The  man  got  six  hundred 
francs  and  thought  he  was  very  well  treated.  Those 
were  the  days  when  a  family  could  live  like  princes  in 
Italy  for  five  thousand  scudi  a  year.  The  Cavaliere 
once  upon  a  time  was  a  great  dandy  —  don't  blush, 
Cavaliere:  any  one  can  see  that,  just  as  any  one  can 
see  what  7  was!  Get  him  to  tell  you  what  he  made 
a  figure  upon.  The  railroads  have  brought  in  the  vul 
garians.  That  's  what  I  call  it  now  —  the  invasion 
of  the  vulgarians!  What  are  poor  we  to  do  ?" 

156 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

Rowland  had  begun  to  murmur  some  remedial 
proposition  when  he  was  interrupted  by  the  voice  of 
Miss  Light  calling  across  the  room,  "Mamma!" 

"My  own  love?" 

"This  gentleman  wishes  to  model  my  bust.  Please 
speak  to  him  about  it." 

The  Cavaliere  emitted  a  sound  between  a  growl  and 
a  giggle.  "Already?  Santo  Dio!"  he  cried. 

Rowland  looked  round,  equally  surprised  at  the 
promptitude  of  the  proposal.  Roderick  stood  planted 
before  the  girl  with  his  arms  folded,  looking  at  her 
as  he  would  have  done  at  the  Medicean  Venus.  He 
never  paid  cheap  compliments,  and  Rowland,  though 
he  had  not  heard  him  speak,  could  imagine  the  start 
ling  distinctness  with  which  he  made  his  request. 

"  He  saw  me  a  year  ago,"  Miss  Light  went  on,  "  and 
he  has  been  thinking  of  me  ever  since."  Her  mode  of 
speech  was  peculiar;  it  had  a  kind  of  studied  inex- 
pressiveness  which  was  yet  not  the  conscious  drawl 
of  affectation. 

"I  must  make  your  daughter's  bust  —  that's  all, 
madam!"  cried  Roderick  with  warmth. 

"I  would  rather  you  should  make  the  poodle's," 
this  young  lady  returned.  "  Is  it  very  very  tiresome  ? 
I  've  spent  half  my  life  sitting  for  my  photograph,  in 
every  conceivable  attitude  and  with  every  conceivable 
coiffure.  It  seems  to  me  I  've  posed  enough." 

"My  dear  child,"  said  Mrs.  Light,  "it  may  be 
one's  duty  to  pose!  But  as  to  my  daughter's  sitting  to 
you,  sir  —  to  a  young  artist  whom  we  don't  know  — 
it 's  a  matter  that  one  must  look  at  a  little.  It 's  not 
a  favour  that 's  to  be  had  for  the  mere  asking." 

157 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  If  I  don't  make  her  from  life,"  Roderick  replied 
with  energy,  "I'll  make  her  from  memory,  and  if  the 
thing's  to  be  done  you  had  better  have  it  done  as 
well  as  possible." 

"Mamma  hesitates,"  Miss  Light  explained,  "be 
cause  she  does  n't  know  whether  you  mean  she  shall 
pay  you  for  the  bust  or  you  '11  pay  me  for  the  sitting. 
She  's  capable  of  thinking  of  that,  mamma.  I  can 
assure  you  at  least  that  she  won't  pay  you  a  sou." 

"  My  daughter,  you  forget  yourself,"  said  the  poor 
lady  with  an  attempt  at  a  high  tone.  "Of  course," 
she  added  in  a  moment  with  a  change  of  note,  "the 
bust  would  be  my  own  property." 

"Of  course!"  cried  Roderick  impatiently. 

"Dearest  mother,"  the  girl  interposed,  "how  can 
you  carry  another  stone  image  about  the  world  with 
you  ?  Is  n't  it  enough  to  drag  the  poor  original  ?" 

"My  dear,  you 're  talking  great  nonsense,"  Mrs. 
Light  curtly  pronounced. 

"You  can  always  get  something  for  it,"  the  girl 
pursued  with  the  same  practised  innocence.  "You 
always  get  something  for  everything.  I  dare  say  that 
with  patience  you  '11  still  get  something  even  for  me." 

Mrs.  Light  turned  to  Rowland,  who  was  sorry  for 
her,  flushed  and  irritated.  "  She  's  as  wicked  to-day 
as  she  knows  how  to  be,  and  that 's  saying  a  good 
deal!" 

The  Cavaliere  grinned  in  silence  and  walked  away 
on  tiptoe  with  his  hat  to  his  lips,  as  if  to  leave  the 
field  clear  for  action.  Rowland,  on  the  contrary, 
wished  to  mediate.  "You  had  better  not  refuse,"  he 
said  to  Miss  Light,  "  until  you  've  seen  Mr.  Hudson's 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

things  in  the  marble.  Your  mother  's  to  come  and 
look  at  some  that  I  possess." 

"Thank  you;  I  've  no  doubt  you  '11  see  us.  I  dare 
say  Mr.  Hudson  's  very  clever;  but  I  don't  care  for 
modern  sculpture.  I  can't  look  at  it." 

"You  shall  care  for  my  bust,  I  promise  you!" 
Roderick  declared  with  a  laugh. 

"To  satisfy  Miss  Light,"  said  the  Cavaliere,  "one 
of  the  old  Greeks  ought  to  come  to  life." 

"It  would  be  worth  his  while,"  said  Roderick, 
acquitting  himself,  to  Rowland's  knowledge,  of  his 
first  public  madrigal. 

"  I  might  sit  to  Phidias  if  he  would  promise  to  be 
very  amusing  and  make  me  laugh.  What  do  you  say, 
Stenterello  ?  would  you  sit  to  Phidias  ?" 

"We  must  talk  of  this  some  other  time,"  said  Mrs. 
Light.  "We 're  in  Rome  for  the  winter.  Many  thanks. 
Cavaliere,  call  the  carriage."  The  Cavaliere  led  the 
way  out,  backing  like  a  silver-stick,  and  Miss  Light, 
following  her  mother,  nodded,  without  looking  at 
them,  to  each  of  the  young  men. 

"Immortal  powers,  what  a  head!"  cried  Roderick 
when  they  were  gone.  "There's  my  fortune  —  on 
that  girl's  two  feet." 

"  She 's  certainly  very  beautiful,"  said  Rowland. 
"But  I  'm  sorry  you  've  undertaken  her  bust." 

"And  why,  pray?" 

"I  suspect  it  will  bring  trouble." 

"What  kind  of  trouble?" 

"I  hardly  know.  They're  queer  people.  The 
mamma  strikes  me  as  a  good  bit  of  an  adventuress. 
Heaven  knows  what  the  daughter  may  be." 

159 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"The  daughter  's  simply  a  breathing  goddess," 
Roderick  instantly  returned. 

"  Just  so.    She  's  all  the  more  dangerous." 

"Dangerous  ?  What  will  she  do  to  me  ?  She  doesn't 
bite,  I  imagine." 

"It  remains  to  be  seen.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
women  —  you  ought  to  know  by  this  time  —  the  safe 
and  the  unsafe.  Besides,  there  's  more  than  one  way 
of  biting  —  and  I  thought  you  had  been  bitten." 

"My  dear  man,"  smiled  Roderick  very  boldly, 
"with  you  to  plaster  me  up  — !"  But  he  broke  off  — 
only  to  fall  gaily  a-whistling:  a  demonstration  ad 
dressed  apparently  to  the  advent,  as  he  had  said,  of 
his  fortune. 

In  calling  this  young  lady  and  her  mamma  queer 
people  Rowland  had  perhaps  too  crudely  betrayed 
his  now  alert  sense  for  possible  complications.  They 
were  so  marked  a  variation  from  the  monotonous 
troop  of  his  compatriots  that  he  felt  much  curiosity 
as  to  the  sources  of  the  change,  especially  since  he 
doubted  greatly  whether  on  the  whole  it  elevated  the 
type.  During  the  next  week  he  saw  the  two  ladies 
driving  daily  in  a  well-appointed  landau,  with  the 
Cavaliere  and  the  poodle  in  the  front  seat.  From 
Mrs.  Light  he  received  a  gracious  salute,  tempered  by 
her  native  majesty ;  but  the  young  girl,  looking  straight 
before  her,  seemed  profoundly  indifferent  to  observers. 
Her  extraordinary  beauty,  however,  had  already  made 
observers  numerous  and  given  the  haunters  of  the 
Pincian  plenty  to  talk  about.  The  echoes  of  their 
commentary  reached  Rowland's  ears;  but  he  had 
little  taste  for  raw  rumour  and  preferred  it  responsibly 

1 60 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

prepared.  It  was  so  supplied  him  by  Madame 
Grandoni,  to  whom  Mrs.  Light  and  her  wonderful 
daughter  had  been  from  of  old  familiar  objects. 

"I've  known  the  mamma  for  twenty  years,"  said 
this  judicious  critic,  "and  if  you  ask  any  of  the  peo 
ple  who  have  been  living  here  as  long  as  I,  you  will 
find  they  remember  her  well.  I  've  held  the  beautiful 
Christina  on  my  knee  when  she  was  a  little  wizened 
baby  with  a  very  red  face  and  no  promise  of  beauty 
but  those  magnificent  eyes.  Ten  years  ago  Mrs.  Light 
disappeared,  and  was  not  afterwards  seen  in  Rome, 
except  for  a  few  days,  not  long  since,  when  she  passed 
through  on  her  way  to  Naples.  Then  it  was  you  met 
the  trio  in  the  Ludovisi  gardens.  When  I  first  knew 
her  she  was  the  unmarried  but  very  marriageable 
daughter  of  an  old  American  painter  of  very  bad  land 
scapes,  which  people  used  to  buy  from  charity  and  use 
for  fire-boards.  His  name  was  Savage;  it  used  to  make 
every  one  laugh,  he  was  such  a  mild,  melancholy,  piti 
ful  old  personage.  He  had  married  a  horrible  wife,  an 
Englishwoman  who  had  been  on  the  stage.  It  was 
said  she  used  to  beat  poor  Savage  with  his  mahl- 
stick  and,  when  the  domestic  finances  were  low,  to 
lock  him  up  in  his  studio  and  tell  him  he  should  n't 
come  out  until  he  had  painted  half  a  do/en  of  his 
daubs.  She  had  a  good  deal  of  showy  beauty.  She 
would  go  forth  with  the  key  in  her  pocket  and,  her 
beauty  assisting,  she  would  make  certain  people  take 
the  pictures.  It  helped  her  at  last  to  make  an  English 
lord  run  away  with  her.  At  the  time  I  speak  of  she 
had  quite  disappeared.  Mrs.  Light  was  then  a  very 
handsome  girl,  though  by  no  means  so  handsome  as 

161 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

her  daughter  has  now  become.  Mr.  Light  was  an 
American  consul,  newly  appointed  at  one  of  the 
Adriatic  ports.  He  was  a  mild,  fair-whiskered  young 
man,  with  some  little  property,  arid  my  impression 
is  that  he  had  got  into  bad  company  at  home  and  his 
family  had  procured  him  his  place  to  keep  him  out  of 
harm's  way.  He  was  at  any  rate  clearly  a  gentleman. 
He  came  up  to  Rome  on  a  holiday,  fell  in  love  with 
Miss  Savage  and  married  her  on  the  spot.  He  had 
not  been  married  three  years  when  he  was  drowned 
in  the  Adriatic,  no  one  ever  knew  how.  The  young 
widow  came  back  to  Rome,  to  her  father,  and  here 
shortly  afterwards,  in  the  dear  shadow  of  Saint  Peter's, 
her  little  girl  was  born.  It  might  have  been  supposed 
that  Mrs.  Light  would  marry  again,  and  I  know  she 
had  opportunities.  But  she  overreached  herself. 
She  would  take  nothing  less  than  a  title  and  a  fortune, 
and  they  were  not  forthcoming.  She  was  admired 
and  very  fond  of  admiration;  very  vain,  very  worldly, 
very  silly.  She  remained  a  pretty  widow  with  a  sur 
prising  variety  of  bonnets  and  a  dozen  men  always 
in  her  train.  Giacosa  dates  from  this  period.  He 
calls  himself  a  Roman,  but  I  've  an  impression  he 
came  up  from  Ancona  with  her.  He  was  I 'ami  de 
la  maison.  He  used  to  hold  her  bouquets,  clean 
her  gloves  and  satin  shoes,  run  her  errands,  get  her 
opera-boxes,  fight  her  battles  with  the  shopkeepers. 
For  this  he  needed  courage,  for  she  was  smothered  in 
debt.  She  at  last  left  Rome  to  escape  her  creditors. 
Many  of  them  must  remember  her  still,  but  she 
seems  now  to  have  money  to  satisfy  them.  She  left 
her  poor  old  father  here  alone  —  helpless,  infirm 

162 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  unable  to  work.  A  subscription  was  shortly 
afterwards  taken  up  among  the  foreigners,  and  he 
was  sent  back  to  America,  where,  as  I  finally  heard, 
he  died  in  some  sort  of  asylum.  From  time  to  time, 
for  several  years,  I  heard  vaguely  of  Mrs.  Light  as 
a  wandering  beauty  at  French  and  German  watering- 
places.  Once  came  a  rumour  that  she  was  going  to 
make  a  grand  marriage  in  England;  then  we  heard 
that  the  gentleman  had  thought  better  of  it  and  left 
her  to  keep  afloat  as  she  could.  She  was  a  terribly 
scatter-brained  creature.  She  pretends  to  be  a  great 
lady  —  Dieu  sait  pourquoi !  —  but  I  consider  that  old 
Filomena,  my  washerwoman,  is  in  essentials  a  greater 
one.  Certainly,  after  all,  however,  she  has  been 
fortunate.  She  embarked  at  last  on  a  lawsuit  about 
some  property  with  her  husband's  family,  and  went 
to  America  to  attend  to  it.  She  came  back  triumph 
ant,  with  a  long  purse.  She  reappeared  in  Italy  and 
established  herself  for  a  while  in  Venice.  Then  she 
came  to  Florence,  where  she  spent  a  couple  of  years 
and  where  I  saw  her.  Last  year  she  passed  down  to 
Naples,  which  I  should  have  said  was  just  the  place 
for  her,  and  this  winter  she  has  laid  siege  to  Rome. 
She  seems  very  prosperous.  She  has  taken  a  floor 
in  the  Palazzo  Falconieri,  she  keeps  her  carriage, 
and  Christina  and  she,  between  them,  must  have  a 
pretty  milliner's  bill.  Giacosa  has  turned  up  again, 
looking  like  one  of  those  collapsed  balloons,  that  chil 
dren  play  with,  blown  out  again  for  the  occasion." 

"What  sort  of  education,"  Rowland  attentively 
asked,  "do  you  suppose  the  mother's  adventures  to 
have  been  for  the  daughter  ?" 

163 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"A  strange  school  enough.  But  Mrs.  Light  told 
me  in  Florence  that  she  had  given  her  child  the  edu 
cation  of  a  princess.  In  other  words  I  suppose  she 
speaks  three  or  four  languages  and  has  read  several 
hundred  French  novels.  Christina,  I  imagine,  has 
plenty  of  wit  —  also  plenty  of  will.  When  I  saw  her 
at  that  same  time  I  was  amazed  at  her  beauty,  and 
certainly  if  there  be  any  truth  in  faces  she  ought  to 
have  the  soul  of  an  angel.  Perhaps  she  has.  I  don't 
judge  her;  she 's  an  extraordinary  young  person. 
She  has  been  told  twenty  times  a  day  by  her  mother, 
since  she  was  five  years  old,  that  she  's  a  beauty  of 
beauties,  that  her  face  is  her  fortune,  that  she  was 
born  for  great  things,  and  that  if  she  plays  her  cards 
she  may  marry  God  knows  whom.  If  she  has  not 
been  quite  ruined  she  's  a  very  decent  creature.  My 
own  impression  is  that,  like  the  most  interesting 
people  always,  she  's  a  mixture  of  better  and  worse, 
of  good  passions  and  bad  —  always  of  passions, 
however;  and  that,  whatever  she  is,  she  's  neither 
stupid  nor  mean  and  possibly,  by  a  miracle,  not  even 
false.  Mrs.  Light  having  failed  to  make  her  own  for 
tune  in  matrimony,  has  transferred  her  hopes  to  her 
daughter  and  nursed  them  till  they  've  become  a 
craze.  She  has  a  hobby,  which  she  rides  in  secret; 
but  some  day  she  '11  let  you  see  it.  I  'm  sure  that 
if  you  go  in  some  evening  unannounced  you  '11  find 
her  studying  the  tea-leaves  in  her  cup  or  telling  her 
daughter's  fortune  with  a  greasy  pack  of  cards.  She 
reminds  me,  like  that,  of  some  extravagant  old 
woman  in  a  novel  —  in  something  of  Hofmann  or 
Balzac,  something  even  of  your  own  Thackeray. 

164 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

She  promises  the  girl  a  prince  —  a  reigning  prince. 
But  if  Mrs.  Light's  a  fool  she  can  still  count  on  her 
fingers,  and  lest  considerations  of  state  should  deny 
her  potentate  the  luxury  of  a  love-match  she  keeps 
on  hand  a  few  common  mortals.  At  the  worst  she 
would  take  a  duke,  an  English  lord,  or  even  a  young 
American  with  a  proper  number  of  millions.  The 
poor  woman  can  certainly  never  lie  quiet,  she  's  un 
acquainted  with  the  luxury  of  repose.  She  's  always 
building  castles  and  knocking  them  down  again  — 
always  casting  her  nets  and  pulling  them  in.  If  her 
daughter  were  less  of  a  beauty  her  pretensions  would 
be  grotesque;  but  there  's  something  in  the  girl,  as 
one  looks  at  her,  that  seems  to  make  it  very  possible 
she  may  be  marked  out  for  one  of  those  romantic 
fortunes  that  history  now  and  then  relates.  'Who, 
after  all,  was  the  Empress  of  the  French  ?'  Mrs. 
Light  is  for  ever  saying.  'And  beside  Christina  the 
Empress  is  a  dowdy!" 

"And  what  does  Christina  say  ?" 

"She  makes  no  scruple,  as  you  know,  of  saying 
that  she  wouldn't  mind  her  mother's  idiocy  if  it 
was  n 't  for  her  vulgarity.  What  she  l  thinks '  goodness 
knows.  I  suspect  that  practically  she  doesn't  com 
mit  herself.  She 's  excessively  proud,  and  holds 
herself  fit  for  the  highest  station  in  the  world; 
but  she  knows  that  her  mother  would  make  her  ri 
diculous  if  anything  could,  and  that  even  she  herself 
might  look  awkward  in  making  unsuccessful  ad 
vances.  So  she  remains  sublimely  detached  and  lets 
mamma  take  the  risks.  If  the  prince  is  captured  so 
much  the  better;  if  he  's  not  she  need  never  confess 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  herself  that  even  a  reigning  sovereign  has  slighted 
her." 

"Your  report's  as  solid,"  Rowland  said  to  Madame 
Grandoni,  thanking  her,  "as  if  it  had  been  drawn  up 
for  the  Academy  of  Sciences;"  and  he  congratulated 
himself  on  having  listened  to  it  when  a  couple  of 
days  later  Mrs.  Light  and  her  daughter,  attended 
by  the  Cavaliere  and  the  poodle,  came  to  his  rooms 
to  look  at  Roderick's  statues.  It  was  more  comfortable 
to  know  just  with  whom  he  was  dealing. 

Mrs.  Light  was  prodigiously  gracious  and  show 
ered  down  compliments  not  only  on  the  statues 
but  on  all  his  possessions.  "Upon  my  word,"  she 
said,  "you  rich  young  men  know  how  to  make  your 
selves  comfortable.  If  one  of  us  poor  women  had 
half  as  many  easy-chairs  and  nick-nacks  we  should 
be  famously  abused.  It 's  really  selfish  to  be  living 
all  alone  in  such  a  place  as  this.  Cavaliere,  how 
should  you  like  this  suite  of  rooms  and  a  fortune  to  fill 
them  with  pictures  and  bibelots  ?  Christina  love,  look 
at  that  mosaic  table.  Mr.  Mallet,  I  could  almost  beg 
it  from  you!  Yes,  that  Eve  is  certainly  very  fine.  We 
need  n't  be  ashamed  of  such  a  great-grandmother  as 
that.  If  she  was  really  such  a  beautiful  woman  it 
accounts  for  the  good  looks  of  some  of  us.  Where  's 
Mr.  Roderick,  whom  we  all  the  other  day  fell  in 
love  with  —  we  thought  him  handsomer  than  any  of 
his  figures.  Why  is  n't  he  hereto  be  complimented  ?" 

Christina  had  remained  but  a  moment  in  the  chair 
Rowland  placed  for  her,  had  given  but  a  cursory 
glance  at  the  statues,  and  then,  leaving  her  seat,  had 
begun  to  wander  round  the  room  —  looking  at  her- 

166 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

self  in  the  mirrors,  touching  the  ornaments  and  curi 
osities,  glancing  at  the  books  and  prints.  Rowland's 
saloon  was  encumbered  with  valuable  pieces,  and 
she  found  plenty  of  occupation.  Rowland  presently 
joined  her  and  pointed  out  some  of  the  objects  sup 
posed  to  be  interesting. 

"It 's  an  odd  jumble,  you  know,"  she  said  frankly. 
"  Some  things  are  very  good  —  some  are  very  ugly. 
But  I  like  ugly  things  when  they  have  a  certain  look. 
Prettiness  is  terribly  vulgar  nowadays,  and  it 's  not 
every  one  that  knows  just  the  sort  of  ugliness  that 's 
amusing.  However,  there  are  more  people  now  that 
are  horridly  knowing  than  not  —  and  the  only  nice 
thing,  I  think  really,  is  to  be  as  ignorant  as  a  fish.  We 
cant  be  though,  you  or  I,  unfortunately,  can  we  ? 
we  're  so  awfully  intelligent.  We  're  born  to  know 
and  to  suffer,  aren't  we?"  With  which,  suddenly, 
she  broke  off.  "I  like  looking  at  people's  things," 
she  then  went  on,  turning  to  Rowland  and  resting 
her  lovely  eyes  on  him.  "It  helps  you  to  find  out 
their  characters." 

"Am  I  to  suppose,"  asked  Rowland  smiling,  "that 
you  've  arrived  at  any  conclusions  as  to  mine  ?" 

"I  'm  rather  intrigue  e\  you  have  too  many  things; 
one  seems  to  contradict  another.  You're  very  artistic 
and  yet  you  're  very  prosaic;  you  have  what  is  called 
a  'catholic'  taste,  and  yet  you're  full  of  obstinate 
little  prejudices  and  preferences  which,  if  I  knew  you, 
I  should  find  very  tiresome.  I  don't  think  I  like  you." 

"You  make  a  great  mistake,"  laughed  Rowland. 
"I  assure  you  I  'm  worth  liking." 

"Yes,  I  'm  probably  wrong,  and  if  I  knew  you  I 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

should  find  out  I  was  wrong,  and  that  would  irritate 
me  and  make  me  dislike  you  more.  So  you  see  we're 
necessarily  enemies." 

"No,  I  don't  at  all  object  to  you" 

"Worse  and  worse;  for  you  certainly  will  never  get 
any  good  of  me." 

"You're  very  discouraging  then." 

"I'm  fond  of  facing  the  truth,  though  some  day 
you'll  deny  even  that.  Where's  the  young  man  of 
genius?"  she  pursued  —  "whom  I'm  not,  in  spite 
of  my  mother,  in  love  with!  " 

"  You  mean  my  friend  Hudson  ?  He 's  represented 
by  these  beautiful  works." 

Miss  Light  looked  for  some  moments  at  the  objects 
in  question.  "Yes,"  she  said,  "they  're  not  so  silly  as 
most  of  the  things  we've  seen.  They've  no  beastly 
chic,  and  yet  they  're  beautiful." 

"You  describe  them  perfectly,"  said  Rowland. 
"They're  beautiful,  and  yet  they  've  no  beastly  chic. 
That 'sit!" 

"If  he'll  promise  to  put  no  beastly  chic  into  my 
bust  I  've  a  mind  to  let  him  make  it.  A  request  made 
in  those  terms  deserves  to  be  granted." 

"  In  what  terms  ?  " 

"Didn't  you  hear  him?  'Mademoiselle,  you  al 
most  come  up  to  one  of  my  dreams.  I  must  model  your 
bust.'  That  almost  should  be  rewarded!  He's  like 
me,  he  likes  to  face  the  truth.  No,  I'm  not  in  love 
with  him,  but  I  think  we  should  get  on  together." 

The  Cavaliere  approached  Rowland  to  express  the 
pleasure  he  had  derived  from  his  splendid  collection. 
His  smile  was  exquisitely  bland,  his  attitude  seemed 

168 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  call  attention  to  its  exemplary  correctness.  But  he 
gave  Rowland  an  odd  sense  of  looking  at  an  elaborate 
waxen  image  adjusted  to  perform  certain  gestures 
and  emit  certain  sounds.  It  had  once  contained  the 
marvellous  machinery  of  a  spirit  too,  but  some  acci 
dent  had  apparently  befallen  that  part  of  the  mechan 
ism,  to  the  cost  of  the  perfect  imitation  of  life.  Never 
theless,  Rowland  reflected,  there  are  more  graceless 
things  than  the  mere  motions  and  passes  of  a  very  old 
civilisation  —  the  civilisation  that  had  given  this  per 
sonage  his  inexhausted  impetus  never  having  struck 
him  as  so  immemorially  old.  The  Cavaliere  also 
had  spirit  enough  left  to  desire  to  speak  a  few  words 
on  his  own  account  and  call  Rowland's  attention  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  not  after  all  a  hired  cicerone,  but 
an  ancient  Roman  gentleman.  Rowland  felt  sorry  for 
him;  he  hardly  knew  why.  He  assured  him  in 
friendly  fashion  that  he  must  come  again,  that  his 
house  was  always  at  his  service.  The  Cavaliere  took 
it  with  perfect  delicacy.  "You  do  me  too  much 
honour,"  he  murmured.  "If  you  '11  allow  me  —  it 's 
not  impossible!" 

Mrs.  Light  meanwhile  had  prepared  to  depart.  "  If 
you  're  not  afraid  to  come  and  see  two  quiet  little 
women  we  shall  be  most  happy!  We  have  no  statues 
nor  pictures  —  we  have  nothing  but  each  other.  Eh, 
darling?" 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Christina. 

"Oh,  and  the  Cavaliere,"  added  her  mother. 

"The  poodle,  please!"  cried  the  girl. 

Rowland  glanced  at  the  Cavaliere;  he  was  smiling 
more  blandly  than  ever. 

169 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Our  friend  presented  himself  a  few  days  later,  as 
civility  demanded,  at  Mrs.  Light's  door.  He  found 
her  living  in  one  of  the  stately  houses  of  the  Via  dell' 
Angelo  Custode  and  rather  to  his  surprise  was  told 
she  was  at  home.  He  passed  through  half  a  dozen 
rooms  and  was  ushered  into  an  immense  saloon,  at 
one  end  of  which  sat  the  mistress  of  the  establishment 
with  a  piece  of  embroidery.  She  received  him  very 
graciously  and  then,  pointing  mysteriously  to  a  large 
screen  which  was  unfolded  across  the  embrasure  of 
one  of  the  deep  windows,  "  I  'm  mounting  guard,  you 
see!"  she  said.  Rowland  looked  interrogative,  where 
upon  she  beckoned  him  forward  and  motioned  him  to 
step  beyond  the  screen.  He  obeyed  and  for  some  mo 
ments  stood  gazing.  Roderick,  with  his  back  turned, 
stood  before  an  extemporised  pedestal,  ardently  shap 
ing  a  formless  mass  of  clay.  Before  him  sat  Christina 
Light,  in  a  white  dress,  with  her  shoulders  bare,  her 
magnificent  hair  twisted  into  a  classic  coil,  her  head 
admirably  carried.  Meeting  Rowland's  gaze  she 
smiled  a  little,  only  in  the  depths  of  her  blue-grey 
eyes,  without  moving.  She  looked  divinely  fair. 


IX 


THE  brilliant  Roman  winter  came  round  again,  and 
the  whole  sense  of  it  entered  still  more  deeply  into 
Rowland's  spirit.  He  grew  intimately,  passionately 
fond  of  all  Roman  sights  and  sensations,  and  to 
breathe  the  air  that  formed  their  medium  and  assured 
them  their  quality  seemed  to  him  the  only  condition 
on  which  life  could  be  long  worth  living.  He  could  not 
have  defined  nor  explained  the  nature  of  his  relish, 
nor  have  made  up  the  sum  of  it  by  adding  together 
his  calculable  pleasures.  It  was  a  large,  vague,  idle, 
half-profitless  emotion,  of  which  perhaps  the  most 
pertinent  thing  that  might  be  said  was  that  it  brought 
with  it  a  relaxed  acceptance  of  the  present,  the  actual, 
the  sensuous  —  of  existence  on  the  terms  of  the  mo 
ment.  It  was  perhaps  for  this  very  reason  that,  in 
spite  of  the  charm  which  Rome  flings  over  one's  mood, 
there  ran  through  Rowland's  meditations  an  under 
tone  of  melancholy  natural  enough  in  a  mind  which 
finds  its  horizon  sensibly  limited  —  even  by  a  magic 
circle.  Whether  it  be  that  one  tacitly  concedes  to 
the  Roman  Church  the  monopoly  of  a  guarantee  of 
immortality,  so  that  if  one  is  indisposed  to  bargain 
with  her  for  the  precious  gift  one  must  do  without  it 
altogether;  or  whether  in  an  atmosphere  so  heavily 
weighted  with  echoes  and  memories  one  grows  to 
believe  that  there  is  nothing  in  one's  consciousness 
not  predetermined  to  moulder  and  crumble  and 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

become  dust  for  the  feet  and  possible  malaria  for  the 
lungs  of  future  generations  —  the  fact  at  least  remains 
that  one  parts  half  willingly  with  one's  hopes  in  Rome 
and  misses  them  only  under  some  very  exceptional 
stress  of  circumstance.  For  this  reason  it  may  per 
haps  be  said  that  there  is  no  other  place  in  which  one's 
daily  temper  has  so  mellow  a  serenity,  and  none  at  the 
same  time  in  which  acute  attacks  of  depression  are 
more  intolerable.  Rowland  had  found  in  fact  a  per 
fect  response  to  his  prevision  that  to  live  in  the  lap  of 
the  incomparable  sorceress  was  an  education  to  the 
senses  and  the  imagination;  but  he  sometimes  won 
dered  whether  this  were  not  a  questionable  gain  in 
case  of  one's  not  being  prepared  to  ask  no  more  of  con 
sciousness  than  they  could  give.  His  growing  sub 
mission  to  the  mere  insidious  actual,  which  resembled 
somehow  the  presence  of  an  extravagant,  flattering 
visitor,  questionably  sincere,  seemed  sometimes  to 
pivot  about  by  a  mysterious  inward  impulse  and  look 
his  conscience  in  the  face.  " But  afterwards  .  .  .?"it 
brought  out  with  a  long  interrogative  echo;  and  he 
could  give  no  answer  but  a  shy  affirmation  that  there 
was  no  such  thing  as  to-morrow  and  that  to-day  was 
uncommonly  fine.  He  often  felt  heavy-hearted;  he 
was  sombre  without  knowing  why;  there  were  no 
visible  clouds  in  his  heaven,  but  there  were  cloud- 
shadows  on  his  mood.  Shadows  projected  they  often 
were,  without  his  knowing  it,  by  an  undue  apprehen 
sion  that  things  might  after  all  not  go  so  ideally  well 
with  Roderick.  When  he  caught  himself  fidgeting 
it  vexed  him,  and  he  rebuked  himself  for  taking 
the  case  unduly  hard.  If  Roderick  chose  to  follow 

172 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

a  crooked  path,  it  was  no  fault  of  his;  he  had  given 
him,  he  would  continue  to  give  him,  all  that  he  had 
offered  him  —  friendship,  sympathy,  counsel,  pa 
tience.  He  had  not  undertaken  to  make  him  over. 

If  Rowland  felt  his  roots  striking  and  spreading  in 
the  Roman  soil,  Roderick  also  affected  him  as  having 
flung  all  questions  to  the  winds.  More  than  once  he 
heard  him  declare  that  he  meant  to  live  and  die 
within  the  shadow  of  Saint  Peter's  and  that  he  cared 
little  if  he  should  never  again  draw  breath  in  Ameri 
can  air.  "  For  a  man  of  my  temperament  Rome  is  the 
only  possible  place,"  he  said;  "it's  better  to  recognise 
the  fact  early  than  late.  So  I  shall  never  go  home 
unless  I  'm  absolutely  forced." 

"What's  your  idea  of  'force'?"  asked  Rowland, 
who  had  noticed  from  far  back  the  unalloyed  respect 
that  he  entertained  for  his  temperament.  "It  seems 
to  me  you  've  an  excellent  reason  for  going  home 
some  day  or  other." 

"Ah,  you  mean  my  engagement?"  Roderick  an 
swered  with  unaverted  eyes.  "Oh  yes,  of  course 
there  's  always  that  funny  fact  to  be  reckoned  with.  I 
call  it  funny,  poor  dear  little  fact,"  he  went  on,  "be 
cause  it  savours  so  of  Northampton  Mass,  and  be 
cause  Northampton  Mass  seen  from  here  somehow  is 
so  funny.  To  work  Mount  Holyoke  and  Mount  Tom 
into  the  same  picture  —  the  same  picture  of  one's 
life  as  the  Pincian  and  the  Palatine  —  is  rather  a  job. 
But  Mary  had  better  come  out  here.  Even  at  the 
worst  I  've  no  intention  of  giving  up  Rome  for  six 
or  eight  years,  and  a  union  deferred  for  that  length 
of  time  would  be  too  absurd." 

173 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Miss  Garland  could  hardly  leave  your  mother 
alone,"  Rowland  judiciously  observed. 

"Oh,  of  course  my  mother  should  come!  I  think 
I  must  suggest  it  in  my  next  letter.  It  will  take  her 
a  year  or  two  to  make  up  her  mind  to  it,  but  if  she 
consents  it  will  brighten  her  up.  It 's  too  small  and 
too  starved  a  life  over  there  even  for  a  person  who 
asks  —  asks,  what  do  I  say  ?  insists  on  —  so  little 
here  below  as  my  mother.  It 's  hard  to  imagine," 
Roderick  added,  "any  change  in  Mary  being  a 
change  for  the  better;  but  I  suppose  there's  no  crime 
in  seeing  the  profit  of  a  change  for  her.  She  would 
undertake,  I  dare  say,  not  to  be  altered  by  it,  in  any 
essential  way,  enough  to  make  a  scandal.  One 's 
never  so  good,  I  suppose,  but  that  one  can  improve." 

Rowland  took  in  for  a  moment  the  tone  of  this, 
and  he  felt  fifty  words  in  answer  to  it  rise  to  his  lips. 
But  he  ended  by  pronouncing  only  a  few  and  none 
of  them  those  that  had  at  first  risen.  "  If  you  wish 
your  mother  and  Miss  Garland  to  come,  hadn't 
you  better  go  home  and  bring  them  ?" 

"Ah, my  dear  man,  I  like  the  way  you  talk  of  my 
going '  home ' !  The  more  I  should  *  go '  the  less  of  that 
sacred  name  there  would  be  about  it  —  so  that  not 
really  to  become  homeless  I  had  better  keep  my  dis 
tance.  At  present,  moreover,"  Roderick  pursued, 
"it  would  just  exactly  break  the  charm.  I'm  just 
beginning  to  profit,  to  get  accustomed  to  —  well,  to 
not  being  accustomed;  just  beginning,  that  is,  to  live 
into  my  possibilities.  Northampton  Main  Street  — 
even  for  three  days  again  —  has  become,  I  think, 
my  principal  impossibility." 

174 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

It  was  reassuring  to  hear  that  Roderick  in  his  own 
view  was  but  "just  beginning"  to  spread  his  wings, 
and  Rowland,  if  he  had  had  any  forebodings,  might 
have  suffered  them  to  be  modified  by  this  declara 
tion.  This  was  the  first  time  since  their  meeting  at 
Geneva  that  the  youth  had  mentioned  his  cousin's 
name,  but  the  ice  being  broken  he  indulged  for  some 
time  afterwards  in  frequent  allusions  to  his  betrothed, 
which  always  had  an  accent  of  scrupulous,  of  almost 
studied,  consideration.  An  uninitiated  observer, 
hearing  him,  would  have  imagined  her  to  be  a  person 
of  a  certain  age  —  possibly  an  affectionate  maiden 
aunt  —  who  had  once  done  him  a  kindness  which 
he  highly  appreciated;  perhaps  presented  him  with 
a  cheque  for  a  thousand  dollars.  Rowland  noted 
the  difference  between  his  present  frankness  and 
his  reticence  during  the  first  six  months  of  his 
engagement,  and  sometimes  wondered  whether  it 
were  not  rather  an  anomaly  that  he  should  expatiate 
more  largely  as  the  happy  event  receded.  He  had 
wondered  over  the  whole  matter  first  and  last  in  a 
great  many  different  ways  —  he  had  looked  at  it  in 
all  possible  lights.  There  was  something  that  mocked 
any  sense  of  due  sequences  in  the  fact  of  his  having 
fallen  in  love  with  his  cousin.  She  was  not,  as  Row 
land  conceived  her,  the  "type"  that,  other  things 
being  what  they  were,  would  most  have  touched 
him,  and  the  mystery  of  attraction  and  desire,  always 
so  baffling  if  seen  only  from  without,  quite  defied 
analysis  here.  Just  why  it  was  that  Roderick  should 
not  in  consistency  have  received  his  impression  his 
comrade  would  have  been  at  a  loss  to  say;  but  the 

175 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

conviction  must  have  been  largely  grounded  in  a  tacit 
comparison  between  himself  and  the  accepted  suitor. 
Roderick  and  he  were  as  different  as  two  men  could 
be,  and  yet  Roderick  had  taken  it  into  his  head  to 
mark  with  the  seal  of  prospective  possession  a  woman 
at  whose  disposition  he  himself  had  been  keeping, 
from  the  moment  of  his  first  meeting  her,  a  secret 
fund  of  strange  alacrities.  That  if  Rowland  Mallet 
happened  to  be  very  much  struck  with  the  merits  of 
Roderick's  mistress  the  irregularity  here  was  hardly 
Roderick's,  was  a  view  of  the  case  to  which  our  vir 
tuous  hero  did  scanty  justice.  There  were  women,  he 
said  to  himself,  whom  it  was  every  one's  business  to 
fall  in  love  with  a  little  —  women  beautiful,  brilliant, 
artful,  easily  interesting.  Miss  Light,  for  instance, 
was  one  of  these;  every  man  who  spoke  to  her  did 
so,  if  not  in  the  language,  at  least  with  something  of 
the  agitation,  the  terror  or  the  hunger,  of  a  lover. 
There  were  other  women  —  they  might  have  great 
beauty,  they  might  have  small;  their  discussable 
beauty  was  not  what  had  most  to  do  with  it  — 
whose  triumphs  in  this  line  were  rare,  but  immut 
ably  permanent.  Such  a  one  conspicuously  was 
Mary  Garland.  By  the  law  of  probabilities  it  had 
been  unlikely  she  should  exert  the  same  charm 
for  each  of  them,  and  was  it  not  possible  there 
fore  that  the  charm  for  Roderick  had  been  simply 
the  circumstance  of  sex,  the  accident  of  nearness, 
the  influence  of  youth,  sympathy,  kindness  —  of  the 
present  feminine  in  short  —  enhanced  indeed  by 
the  advantage  of  an  expressive  countenance  ?  The 
charm  for  Rowland,  on  the  other  hand,  by  this 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

subtle  sophistry  —  the  charm!  was  the  mysterious, 
individual,  essential  woman.  There  was  indeed  an 
element  in  the  glamour  working  so  well  for  his  friend 
that  he  was  obliged  fairly  to  allow  for,  but  which 
he  forbore  to  linger  upon;  the  rather  important 
attraction,  namely,  of  reciprocity.  As  to  the  girl's 
being  herself  in  love,  and  showing  it,  and  commend 
ing  herself  by  the  indubitable  tribute,  this  was  a 
side  of  the  matter  from  which  he  averted  his  head 
for  delicacy,  as  he  conceived,  but  for  a  delicacy  not 
pleasantly  painless.  He  wouldn't  for  the  world  have 
asked  himself — -and  he  quite  noted  it  —  how  "far" 
Mary  had  gone;  gone  toward  creating  Roderick's  flat 
tered  state  by  showing  him  first  that  she  was  smitten. 
He  confined  himself  only  to  judging  that  the  young 
man  was  not  irresistibly  flattered  now,  and  to  feeling 
that  Miss  Garland  was  as  living  a  presence  in  his 
own  world  as  she  had  been  five  days  after  he  left 
her.  He  drifted,  under  these  deep  discretions  indeed, 
nearer  and  nearer  to  the  conviction  that  at  just  that 
crisis  any  other  girl  would  have  answered  Roderick's 
supposedly  sentimental  needs  as  well.  Any  other 
woman  verily  would  do  so  still!  Roderick  had  con 
fessed  as  much  to  him  at  Geneva  in  saying  that  he 
had  been  taking  at  Baden-Baden  the  measure  of  his 
susceptibility. 

His  extraordinary  success  in  modelling  the  bust 
of  the  beautiful  Miss  Light  was  pertinent  evidence  of 
the  quantity  of  consciousness  of  the  great  feminine 
fact  always  at  his  service  for  application  and  discrimi 
nation.  She  sat  to  him  repeatedly  for  a  fortnight,  and 
the  work  was  rapidly  finished.  On  one  of  the  last 

177 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

days  Roderick  asked  Rowland  to  come  and  give  his 
opinion  as  to  what  was  still  wanting;  for  the  sittings 
had  continued  to  take  place  in  Mrs.  Light's  apart 
ment,  the  studio  being  pronounced  too  damp  for  the 
fair  model.  When  Rowland  presented  himself  Chris 
tina,  still  in  her  white  dress,  with  her  shoulders  bare, 
was  standing  before  a  mirror  to  readjust  her  hair, 
the  arrangement  of  which  on  this  occasion  had  ap 
parently  not  met  the  young  sculptor's  approval.  He 
stood  beside  her  directing  the  operation  with  an 
emphatic  ring  that  struck  Rowland  as  denoting 
a  considerable  advance  in  intimacy.  As  this  visitor 
entered  Christina  was  losing  patience.  "  Do  it  your 
self  then!"  she  cried,  and  with  a  rapid  movement 
unloosed  the  great  coil  of  her  tresses  and  let  them  fall 
over  her  shoulders. 

They  were  magnificent,  and  with  her  perfect  face 
dividing  their  rippling  flow  she  looked  like  some  im 
maculate  saint  of  legend  being  led  to  martyrdom. 
Rowland's  eyes  presumably  betrayed  his  admiration, 
but  her  own  showed  no  vulgar  perception  of  anything 
she  was  so  little  concerned  with.  If  Christina  was 
a  coquette,  as  the  remarkable  timeliness  of  this 
incident  might  have  suggested,  her  coquetry  had  the 
highest  finish. 

"  Hudson  has  the  luck  to  be  a  sculptor,  in  his  way," 
Rowland  remarked  with  gaiety;  "but  it  comes  over 
me  that  if  I  were  only  a  painter  — !" 

"Thank  goodness  you're  not!"  said  Christina. 
"I  'm  having  quite  enough  of  this  minute  inspection 
of  my  charms." 

"My  dear  young  man,  hands  off!"   cried   Mrs. 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Light  as  she  came  forward  and  seized  her  daughter's 
hair.  "Christina  love,  I'm  more  surprised  than  I 
can  say." 

"Is  it  indelicate?"  Christina  asked.  "I  beg  Mr. 
Mallet's  pardon."  Mrs.  Light  gathered  up  the  dusky 
locks  and  let  them  fall  through  her  ringers,  glancing 
at  her  visitor  with  a  significant  smile.  Rowland 
had  never  been  in  the  East,  but  if  he  had  attempted 
to  make  a  sketch  of  an  old  slave-merchant  calling 
attention  to  the  "points"  of  a  Circassian  beauty  he 
would  have  depicted  such  a  smile  as  Mrs.  Light's. 
"Mamma's  not  really  shocked,"  added  Christina  in 
a  moment,  as  if  she  had  guessed  her  mother's  by 
play.  "She's  only  afraid  that  Mr.  Hudson  may  have 
injured  my  hair  and  that,  per  conseguenza,  I  shall 
fetch  a  lower  price." 

"You  unnatural  child!"  cried  mamma.  "You  de 
serve  that  I  should  make  a  fright  of  you!"  And  with 
half  a  dozen  skilful  passes  she  twisted  the  tresses 
into  a  single  picturesque  braid,  placed  high  on  the 
head  and  producing  the  effect  of  a  coronet. 

"What  does  your  mother  do  when  she  wants  to 
do  you  justice  ?"  Rowland  enquired,  observing  the 
admirable  line  of  the  girl's  neck  and  shoulder. 

"  I  do  her  justice  when  I  say  she  says  very  atrocious 
things.  What's  one  to  do  with  such  a  horrible  hand 
ful?"  Mrs.  Light  demanded. 

"Think  of  it  at  your  leisure,  Mr.  Mallet,"  said 
Christina,  "  and  when  you  've  discovered  some 
thing  let  us  hear.  But  I  must  tell  you  that  I  shall  not 
willingly  believe  in  any  remedy  of  yours,  for  you 
have  something  in  the  expression  of  your  face  that 

179 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

particularly  provokes  me  to  make  the  remarks  my 
mother  so  inconsolably  deplores.  I  noticed  it  the  first 
time  I  saw  you.  I  think  it 's  because  your  face  is  so 
broad.  For  some  reason  or  other  broad  faces  exas 
perate  me;  they  fill  me  with  a  kind  of  rabbia.  Last 
summer  at  Carlsbad  there  was  an  Austrian  count 
with  enormous  estates  and  some  great  office  at  court. 
He  was  very  attentive  —  seriously  so;  he  was  really 
veryfargone.  Cela  ne  tenait  qua  mot!  But  I  could  n't; 
he  was  impossible.  He  must  have  measured  from 
ear  to  ear  at  least  a  yard  and  a  half.  And  he  was  tow- 
coloured  too,  which  made  it  worse  —  almost  as  fair 
as  Stenterello  —  though  of  course  Stenterello's  face, 
like  his  conversation,  is  full  of  point.  So  I  said  to  him 
frankly:  'Many  thanks,  Herr  Graf;  your  uniform's 
magnificent,  but  your  face  is  too  fat/" 

"I  'm  afraid  that  mine  also,"  said  Rowland  with 
a  smile,  "seems  just  now  to  have  assumed  an  un 
pardonable  latitude." 

"Oh,  I  take  it  you  know  very  well  that  we're  hunt 
ing  for  a  husband  and  that  none  but  tremendous 
swells  need  apply.  Surely  before  these  gentlemen, 
mamma,  I  may  speak  freely;  they  're  so  perfectly 
disinterested.  Mr.  Mallet  won't  do,  because,  though 
he  's  rich,  he  's  not  rich  enough.  Mamma  made  that 
discovery  the  day  after  we  went  to  see  you,  moved 
to  it  by  the  promising  look  of  your  furniture.  I  hope 
she  was  right,  eh  ?  Unless  you  have  millions,  you 
know,  you  need  n't  apply." 

"You  reduce  me  to  the  sense  of  beggary,"  said 
Rowland. 

"Oh,  some  better  girl  than  I  will  decide  some  day, 
180 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

after  mature  reflection,  that,  on  the  whole,  you  your 
self  add  something  to  your  fortune.  Mr.  Hudson  of 
course  is  nowhere;  he  has  nothing  but  his  genius 
and  his  extraordinary  beaux  yeux" 

Roderick  had  stood  looking  at  Christina  intently 
while  she  delivered  herself,  softly  and  slowly,  of  this 
surprising  nonsense.  When  she  had  finished  she 
turned  and  confronted  him;  their  eyes  met  and  he 
blushed  a  little.  "Let  me  be  your  modeller,  and  he 
who  can  may  be  your  husband!"  he  said  abruptly. 

Mrs.  Light,  while  her  daughter  talked,  had  been 
adding  a  few  touches  to  the  arrangement  of  her  hair. 
"  She  's  neither  so  silly  nor  so  vicious  as  you  might 
suppose,"  she  said  to  Rowland  with  dignity.  "If 
you  '11  give  me  your  arm  we  '11  go  and  look  at  the 
bust." 

"  Does  that  most  represent  silliness  or  vice  — 
unless  they  come  to  the  same  thing?"  Christina 
demanded  when  they  stood  before  it. 

Rowland  transferred  his  glance  several  times  from 
the  portrait  to  the  original.  "It  represents  a  young 
lady  whom  I  should  n't  pretend  to  judge  off-hand." 

"She  may  be  a  fool,  but  you  're  not  sure.  Many 
thanks!  You  've  seen  me  half  a  dozen  times.  You  're 
either  very  slow  or  I  'm  very  deep." 

"I'm  certainly  slow,"  said  Rowland.  "I  don't 
expect  to  make  up  my  mind  about  you  in  less  than 
six  months." 

"  I  give  you  six  months  if  you  '11  promise  then 
a  perfectly  frank  opinion.  Mind,  I  shall  not  forget; 
I  shall  insist  upon  a  judgement." 

"Well,  though  I'm  slow  I'm  tolerably  judging," 
181 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

said  Rowland  —  "and  I  'm  tolerably  brave.    So  look 
out!" 

Christina  considered  the  bust  with  a  sigh.  "I'm 
afraid,  after  all,"  she  said,  "that  there's  very  little 
wisdom  in  it  save  what  the  artist  has  put  there.  Mr. 
Hudson  looked  particularly  wise  while  he  was  work 
ing;  he  scowled  and  growled,  but  he  never  opened  his 
mouth.  It 's  very  kind  of  him  not  to  have  represented 
me  yawning." 

"If  I  had  felt  obliged  to  talk  a  lot  of  rubbish  to 
you,"  Roderick  candidly  said,  "the  thing  would  n't 
have  been  a  tenth  so  good,  and  I  should  have  been 
a  great  deal  more  fatigued." 

"Is  it  good,  after  all  ?  Mr.  Mallet's  a  famous  con 
noisseur;  hasn't  he  come  here  to  pronounce?"  the 
girl  went  on. 

The  bust  was  in  fact  a  very  happy  performance  — 
Roderick  had  risen  to  the  level  of  his  subject.  It  was 
thoroughly  a  portrait,  —  not  a  vague  fantasy  exe 
cuted  on  a  graceful  theme,  as  the  busts  of  pretty 
women  in  modern  sculpture  are  apt  to  be.  The  resem 
blance  was  close  and  firm ;  inch  matched  with  inch,  item 
with  item,  grain  with  grain,  yet  all  to  fresh  creation. 
It  succeeded  by  an  exquisite  art  in  representing  with 
out  extravagance  something  that  transcended  and 
exceeded.  Rowland,  however,  as  we  know,  was  not 
fond  of  exploding  into  superlatives,  and  after  examin 
ing  the  piece  he  contented  himself  with  suggesting  two 
or  three  alterations  of  detail. 

"Ah,  how  can  you  be  so  cruel  ?"  demanded  Mrs. 
Light  with  rich  reproachfulness.  "  It 's  surely  a  won 
derful  thing!" 

182 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  Rowland  knows  it 's  a  wonderful  thing,"  said 
Roderick  smiling.  "I  can  tell  that  by  his  face.  The 
other  day  I  finished  something  he  thought  really  bad, 
and  he  looked  very  differently  from  this." 

"How  can  Mr.  Mallet  look?"  asked  Christina. 

"My  dear  Rowland,"  said  Roderick,  "I  'm  speak 
ing  of  my  poor  listening  lady.  You  looked  as  if  you 
had  on  a  pair  of  tight  boots." 

"Ah  my  child,  you'll  not  understand  that!"  cried 
Mrs.  Light.  "You  never  yet  had  a  pair  that  were 
small  enough." 

"It's  a  pity,  Mr.  Hudson,"  said  Christina  gravely, 
"that  you  could  n't  have  introduced  my  feet  into  the 
bust.  But  we  can  hang  a  pair  of  satin  shoes  round 
the  neck." 

"I  nevertheless  like  your  finished  portraits,  Roder 
ick,"  Rowland  observed,  "better  than  your  rough 
sketches.  This  is  a  great  commemoration  of  a  great 
subject.  Miss  Light,  you  may  really  be  proud!" 

"Thank  you,  Mr.  Mallet,  for  the  permission," 
returned  the  girl. 

"I'm  dying  to  see  it  in  the  marble  —  I  make  it  out 
in  a  kind  of  violet  velvet  niche,"  said  Mrs.  Light. 

"Placed  there  on  the  mosaic  .table  and  under  the 
Sassoferrato!"  Christina  went  on.  "We  have  a  Sasso- 
ferrato,  you  know,  from  which  we  're  inseparable  — 
we  travel  with  our  picture  and  our  poodle.  I  hope  you 
keep  well  in  mind,  Mr.  Hudson,  at  all  events,  that 
you  've  not  a  grain  of  property  in  your  work  and  that 
if  mamma  chooses  she  may  have  it  photographed  and 
the  copies  sold  in  the  Piazza  di  Spagna  at  five  francs 
apiece  without  your  having  a  sou  of  the  profits." 

183 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Amen!"  said  Roderick.  "It  was  so  nominated  in 
the  bond.  My  profits  are  here!"  And  he  tapped  his 
forehead. 

"It  would  be  prettier  if  you  said  here!"  And 
Christina  touched  her  heart. 

"My  precious  child,  how  you  do  run  on!"  mur 
mured  Mrs.  Light. 

"It 's  Mr.  Mallet's  effect  on  me," the  girl  answered. 
"I  can't  talk  a  word  of  sense  so  long  as  he  's  in  the 
room.  I  don't  say  that  to  make  you  go,"  she  added; 
"I  say  it  simply  to  justify  myself." 

"The  noble  art  of  self-defence!"  said  Rowland. 

Roderick  declared  that  he  must  get  at  work  and 
requested  Christina  to  take  her  usual  position,  and 
Mrs.  Light  proposed  to  her  visitor  that  they  should 
adjourn  to  her  boudoir.  This  was  a  small  room, 
hardly  more  spacious  than  a  recess,  opening  out  of 
the  drawing-room  and  having  no  other  issue.  Here, 
as  they  entered,  on  a  divan  near  the  door,  Rowland 
perceived  the  constant  Cavaliere,  with  his  arms  folded, 
his  head  dropped  upon  his  breast  and  his  eyes  closed. 

"Sleeping  at  his  post!"  laughed  Rowland. 

"That's  a  punishable  offence,"  rejoined  Mrs. 
Light  sharply.  She  was  on  the  point  of  calling  him  in 
the  same  tone  when  he  suddenly  opened  his  eyes, 
stared  a  moment  and  then  rose  with  a  smile  and 
a  bow. 

"Excuse  me,  dear  lady,"  he  said,  "I  was  overcome 
by  the  —  the  great  heat." 

"Nonsense,  Cavaliere!"  cried  the  lady;  "you 
know  we're  perishing  herewith  the  cold!  You  had 
better  go  and  cool  yourself  in  one  of  the  other  rooms." 

184 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  obey,  dear  lady,"  said  the  Cavaliere;  and  with 
another  salutation  to  Rowland  he  departed,  walking 
very  discreetly  on  his  toes.  Rowland  outstayed  him 
but  a  short  time,  his  appetite  for  Mrs.  Light's  con 
versation  being  small;  he  found  nothing  very  inspir 
ing  in  her  frank  intimation  that  if  he  chose  he  might 
become  a  favourite.  He  was  disgusted  with  himself 
for  pleasing  her;  he  repudiated  any  such  intention. 
In  the  courtyard  of  the  palace  he  overtook  the  Cava 
liere,  who  had  stopped  at  the  porter's  lodge  to  say  a 
word  to  this  functionary's  little  girl.  She  was  a  young 
lady  of  very  tender  years  and  she  wore  a  very  dirty 
pinafore.  He  had  taken  her  up  in  his  arms  to  sing  her 
an  infantine  rhyme,  while  she  stared  at  him  with  big 
deep  Roman  eyes.  On  seeing  Rowland  he  put  her 
down  with  a  kiss,  then  stepped  forward  with  a  con 
scious  grin,  an  unresentful  admission  that  he  was  sen 
sitive  both  to  infant  beauty  and  to  ridicule.  Rowland 
began  to  pity  him  again;  he  had  taken  his  dismissal 
from  the  drawing-room  so  meekly. 

"You  don't  keep  your  promise  to  come  and  see  me. 
But  please  don't  forget  it.  I  want  you  to  tell  me  about 
Rome  thirty  years  ago." 

"Thirty  years  ago  ?  Ah,  dear  sir,  Rome  is  Rome 
still;  a  place  where  strange  things  happen!  But  happy 
things  too,  since  I  have  your  renewed  permission  to 
call.  You  do  me  too  much  honour.  Is  it  in  the  morn 
ing  or  in  the  evening  that  I  should  least  intrude  ?" 

"Take  your  own  time,  Cavaliere;  only  come  some 
time.  I  depend  upon  you,"  said  Rowland. 

The  Cavaliere  thanked  him  with  formal  obeisance. 
To  old  Giacosa  too  he  felt  that  he  was,  in  Roman 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

phrase,  sympathetic;  but  the  idea  of  pleasing  this 
extremely  reduced  gentleman  was  not  disagreeable  to 
him. 

Miss  Light's  bust  stood  for  a  while  on  exhibition  in 
Roderick's  studio,  and  half  the  foreign  colony  came 
to  see  it.  With  the  completion  of  his  work,  however, 
Roderick's  visits  at  the  Palazzo  Falconieri  by  no 
means  came  to  an  end.  He  spent  half  his  time  in  Mrs. 
Light's  drawing-room  and  began  to  be  talked  about 
as  "attentive"  to  Christina.  The  success  of  the  bust 
restored  his  equanimity,  and  in  the  garrulity  of  his 
good-humour  he  suffered  Rowland  to  see  that  she  was 
just  now  the  object  uppermost  in  his  thoughts.  Row 
land,  when  they  talked  of  her,  was  rather  listener  than 
speaker;  partly  because  Roderick's  tone  admitted 
of  few  openings,  and  partly  because,  when  his  com 
panion  laughed  at  himfor  having  called  her  unsafe,  he 
for  some  reason  lacked  presence  of  mind  to  defend 
himself.  The  impression  remained  with  our  friend 
that  she  was  unsafe;  that  she  was  a  complex,  wilful, 
passionate  creature  who  might  easily  draw  down  a 
too  confiding  spirit  into  some  strange  underworld  of 
unworthy  sacrifice,  not  unfurnished  with  traces  of 
others  of  the  lost.  And  yet  these  elements  in  her  were 
in  themselves  an  appeal  to  curiosity,  and  she  struck 
him  not  only  as  preying  possibly  thus  on  the  faith  of 
victims,  but  as  ready  to  take  on  occasion  her  own  life 
in  her  hand.  Roderick,  in  the  glow  of  that  renewed 
admiration  provoked  by  the  fixed  attention  of  por 
trayal,  was  never  weary  of  descanting  on  the  extraor 
dinary  perfection  of  her  beauty. 

"I  had  no  idea  of  it,"  he  said,  "till  I  began  to  look 
186 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

at  her  with  an  eye  to  reproducing  line  for  line  and 
curve  for  curve.  Her  face  is  the  most  exquisite  piece  of 
modelling  that  ever  came  from  creative  hands.  Not  a 
line  without  meaning,  not  a  hair's-breadth  that 's  not 
admirably  finished.  And  then  her  divine  mouth  —  it 
might  really  be  that  of  a  goddess!  It 's  as  if  a  pair  of 
lips  had  been  shaped  just  not  to  utter  all  the  platitudes 
and  all  the  pretences."  Later,  after  he  had  been  work 
ing  for  a  week,  he  was  to  declare  that  if  the  girl  had 
been  inordinately  plain  she  would  still  be  the  most 
wonderful  of  women  and  the  best  conceivable  com 
pany.  "  I  've  quite  forgotten  her  beauty,"  he  said,  "or 
rather  I've  ceased  to  perceive  it  as  something  distinct 
and  defined,  something  independent  of  the  rest  of  her. 
She  's  all  one,  and  all  impossibly  interesting." 

"What  does  she  do  —  what  does  she  say  that 's  so 
remarkable?"  Rowland  asked. 

"Say?  Sometimes  nothing  —  sometimes  every 
thing.  She's  never  the  same,  and  you  never  know  how 
she'll  be.  And  it's  not  for  a  pose  —  it's  because  there 
are  fifty  of  her.  Sometimes  she  walks  in  and  takes  her 
place  without  a  word,  without  a  smile,  gravely,  stiffly, 
as  if  it  were  an  awful  bore.  She  hardly  looks  at  me, 
and  she  walks  away  without  even  glancing  at  my 
work.  On  other  days  she  laughs  and  chatters  and  asks 
endless  questions  and  pours  out  the  most  irresist 
ible  nonsense  —  is  really  most  extraordinarily  droll. 
She's  a  creature  of  moods;  you  can't  count  upon  her; 
she  keeps  one's  expectation,  she  keeps  one's  nerves, 
on  the  stretch:  she's  as  far  from  banal  as  it's  possible 
to  be.  And  then,  bless  you,  my  dear  man,  she  has 
seen,  compared  with  you  and  me,  for  instance,  so 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

remarkably  much  of  the  world.  She  says  the  most 
astounding  things." 

"What  sort  of  things?"  Rowland  wonderingly 
asked. 

It  made  his  friend  hesitate.  "I  can  scarcely  think 
of  a  specimen  that  would  n't  too  much  shock  you!" 

"  It 's  altogether  a  singular  type  of  young  lady," 
said  Rowland  after  the  scene  I  have  sketched.  "It 
may  be  a  charm,  but  it 's  certainly  not  the  orthodox 
charm  of  marriageable  maidenhood,  the  charm  of 
the  'nice  girl'  or  the  'dear  girl'  as  we  have  been  ac 
customed  to  know  those  blest  creatures.  Our  Ameri 
can  girls  are  accused  of  being  more  forward  than  any 
others,  and  this  wonderful  damsel  is  nominally  an 
American.  But  it  has  taken  twenty  years  of  Europe 
to  make  her  what  she  is.  The  first  time  we  saw  her 
I  remember  you  called  her  the  product  of  an  effete 
civilisation,  and  certainly  you  were  not  far  wrong." 

"Well,  you  see,  she  has  an  atmosphere,"  said  Rod 
erick  in  a  tone  of  high  appreciation. 

"Young  unmarried  women  should  be  careful  not 
to  have  too  much,"  his  companion  sagely  risked. 

"Ah,  you  don't  forgive  her  for  hitting  you  so  hard! 
A  man  ought  to  be  flattered  when  such  a  girl  as  that 
takes  so  much  notice  of  him." 

"A  man's  never  flattered  at  a  beautiful  woman's 
not  liking  him,"  said  Rowland. 

"Are  you  sure  she  doesn't  like  you?  That's  to 
the  credit  of  your  humility.  A  fellow  of  more  vanity 
might,  on  the  evidence,  persuade  himself  that  he  was 
positively  in  favour." 

"He  would  have  also  then,"  laughed  Rowland,  "to 
1 88 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

be  a  fellow  of  remarkable  ingenuity."  He  asked 
himself  privately  how  the  deuce  Roderick  reconciled 
it  to  his  conscience  to  think  so  much  more  of  the  girl 
he  was  not  engaged  to  than  of  the  other.  But  it 
amounted  almost  to  arrogance  in  poor  Rowland,  you 
may  say,  to  pretend  to  know  how  often  Roderick 
thought  of  Mary  Garland.  He  wondered  gloomily,  at 
any  rate,  whether  for  men  of  his  friend's  large  easy 
power  there  was  not  an  ampler  moral  law  than  for 
narrow  mediocrities  like  himself,  who,  yielding  Na 
ture  a  meagre  interest  on  her  investment  (such  as  it 
was),  had  no  reason  to  expect  from  her  this  affection 
ate  laxity  as  to  their  accounts.  Was  it  not  a  part  of  the 
eternal  fitness  of  things  that  Roderick,  while  rhapso 
dising  about  Christina  Light,  should  have  it  at  his 
command  to  look  at  you  with  eyes  of  the  most  guile 
less  and  unclouded  blue  and  to  shake  off  your  musty 
imputations  by  a  toss  of  his  romantic  brown  locks  ? 
Or  else  had  he,  in  fact,  no  conscience  to  speak  of? 
Fortunate  mortal  either  way! 

Our  friend  Gloriani  came,  among  others,  to  con 
gratulate  Roderick  on  his  model  and  what  he  had 
made  of  her.  "  Devilish  pretty  through  and  through ! " 
he  said  as  he  looked  at  the  bust.  "Capital  handling 
of  the  neck  and  throat;  lovely  work  on  the  facial 
muscles  and  extraordinary  play,  extraordinary  ele 
gance  of  life,  everywhere.  Your  luck  's  too  hateful, 
but  you  ought  n't  to  have  let  her  off  with  the  mere 
sacrifice  of  her  head.  There  would  be  no  end  to  be 
done  with  the  whole  inimitable  presence  of  her.  If  I 
could  only  have  got  hold  of  her  I  would  have  pumped 
every  inch  of  her  empty.  What  a  pity  she's  not  a  poor 

189 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Trasteverina  whom  we  might  have  for  a  franc  an 
hour!  I've  been  carrying  about  in  my  head  for  years 
an  idea  for  a  creature  as  fine  as  a  flower-stem  and  yet 
as  full  as  a  flame,  but  it  has  always  stayed  there  for 
want  of  a  tolerable  model.  I  've  seen  my  notion  in  bits, 
but  in  her  I  see  it  whole.  As  soon  as  I  looked  at  her 
I  said  to  myself,  '  By  Jove,  there  's  my  idea  in  the 
flesh!'" 

"What 's  the  name  of  your  idea  ?"  Roderick  asked. 

"Don't  take  it  ill,"  said  Gloriani.  "You  know  I'm 
the  very  deuce  for  observation.  The  name  of  my  idea 
is  the  name  of  the  young  woman  —  what  was  hers?  — 
who  pranced  up  to  the  king  her  father  with  a  great 
bloody  head  on  a  great  gold  tray." 

"Salome,  daughter  of  Herodias  ?" 

"Exactly,  and  of  Herod,  king  of  the  Jews." 

"Do  you  think  Miss  Light  looks  then  like  a  Jew 
ess?" 

"No,  he  only  thinks,"  Rowland  interposed,  "that 
Herodias  must  much  have  resembled  Miss  Light  — 
unless  indeed  he  also  sees  our  young  woman  with  your 
head  on  her  charger." 

"Ah,"  Gloriani  laughed,  "it  isn't  a  question  of 
Hudson's  'head'!" 

If  Roderick  had  taken  it  ill,  this  likening  of  the 
girl  he  so  admired  to  the  macabre  maiden  of  the 
Christian  story  (which  resentment  was  not  probable, 
since  we  know  he  thought  Gloriani  an  ass  and 
expected  little  truth  of  him),  he  might  have  been 
soothed  by  the  candid  incense  of  Sam  Singleton,  who 
came  and  sat  for  an  hour  in  the  very  prostration  of 
homage  before  both  bust  and  artist.  But  Roderick's 

190 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

attitude  in  regard  to  this  worshipper  was  one  of  un 
disguised  though  friendly  amusement;  as  indeed  there 
was  oddity  enough  in  the  little  water-colourist's  gasps 
and  glares  and  other  fond  intensities,  which  had 
ever  some  lapse  of  intelligibility  for  their  climax. 
"Ah,  don't  envy  our  friend,"  Rowland  said  to  Single 
ton  afterwards,  on  his  expressing  with  a  small  groan 
of  depreciation  of  his  own  paltry  performances  his 
sense  of  the  brilliancy  of  Roderick's  talent.  "  You  sail 
nearer  the  shore,  but  you  sail  in  smoother  waters.  Be 
contented  with  what  you  are,  and  paint  me  another 
picture." 

"Oh,  I  don't  envy  Hudson  anything  he  possesses," 
Singleton  said,  "because  to  take  anything  away 
would  spoil  his  beautiful  completeness.  'Complete,' 
that 's  what  he  is;  while  we  little  clevernesses  are  like 
half-ripened  plums,  only  good  eating  on  the  side  that 
has  had  a  glimpse  of  the  sun.  Nature  has  made  him 
so,  and  fortune  confesses  to  it!  He  's  himself  in  per 
son  such  a  subject  for  a  painter  —  a  Pinturicchio- 
figure,  is  n't  he  ?  come  to  life ;  he  has  more  genius 
than  any  one,  and  as  a  matter  of  course  the  most 
beautiful  girl  in  the  world  comes  and  offers  to  feed 
him  with  her  beauty.  If  that's  not  completeness  where 
shall  one  look  for  it?" 


X 

ONE  morning,  going  into  Roderick's  studio,  Rowland 
found  the  young  sculptor  entertaining  Miss  Blanch- 
ard  —  but  entertaining  her,  as  it  were,  quite  at  her 
own  expense.  She  ministered,  for  him,  to  irritation, 
and  he  had  never  climbed  to  her  sky-parlour  with 
the  exclamatory  herd  at  large  —  exclamatory  over 
her  petals  and  dewdrops.  He  had  once  quoted  Ten 
nyson  against  her  — 

"  And  is  there  any  moral  shut 
Within  the  bosom  of  the  rose  ?  " 

"  In  all  Miss  Blanchard's  roses  you  may  be  sure  there 
is  a  moral,"  he  had  said.  "You  can  see  it  sticking  out 
its  head,  and  if  you  go  to  smell  the  flower  it  scratches 
your  nose."  But  on  this  occasion  she  had  come  with 
a  propitiatory  gift  —  introducing  her  friend  and 
countryman  Mr.  Leavenworth.  Mr.  Leavenworth 
was  a  tall,  expansive,  bland  gentleman,  with  a  care 
fully-brushed  whisker  and  a  spacious,  fair,  well- 
favoured  face,  which  seemed  somehow  to  have  more 
room  in  it  than  was  occupied  by  a  smile  of  superior 
benevolence,  so  that  (with  his  smooth  white  forehead) 
it  bore  a  certain  resemblance  to  a  large  parlour  with 
a  very  florid  carpet,  but  without  mural  decoration. 
He  held  his  head  high,  talked  impressively,  and  told 
Roderick  within  five  minutes  that  he  was  a  widower 
travelling  to  distract  his  mind,  and  that  he  had  lately 
retired  from  the  proprietorship  of  large  mines  of 

192 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

borax  in  the  Middle  West.  Roderick  supposed  at 
first  that  under  the  influence  of  his  bereavement  he 
had  come  to  order  a  tombstone;  but  observing  the 
extreme  benevolence  of  his  address  to  Miss  Blanchard 
he  credited  him  with  a  judicious  prevision  that  on  the 
day  the  tombstone  should  be  completed  a  monument 
of  his  inconsolability  might  appear  mistimed.  Mr. 
Leavenworth,  however,  was  disposed  to  give  an 
Order,  —  to  give  it  with  a  capital  letter. 

"You'll  find  me  eager  to  patronise  our  indigen 
ous  talent,"  he  said.  "You  may  be  sure  that  I  Ve 
employed  a  native  architect  for  the  large  residential 
structure  that  I'm  erecting  on  the  banks  of  the  Ohio. 
I've  sustained  a  considerable  loss;  but  are  we  not  told 
that  the  office  of  art  is  second  only  to  that  of  religion  ? 
That 's  why  I  have  come  to  you,  sir.  In  the  retreat 
that  I  'm  preparing,  surrounded  by  the  memorials 
of  my  wanderings,  I  hope  to  recover  a  certain  degree 
of  tone.  They're  doing  what  they  can  in  Paris  for  the 
fine  effect  of  some  of  its  features;  but  the  effect  I  have 
myself  most  at  heart  will  be  that  of  my  library,  filled 
with  well-selected  and  beautifully-bound  authors  in 
groups  relieved  from  point  to  point  by  high-class 
statuary.  I  should  like  to  entrust  you,  can  we  arrange 
it,  with  the  execution  of  one  of  these  appropriate 
subjects.  What  do  you  say  to  a  representation,  in 
pure  white  marble,  of  the  idea  of  Intellectual  Refine 
ment  ?" 

"Whose  idea,  sir?"  Roderick  asked.  "Your 
idea?" 

But  as  at  this  question,  and  especially  at  a  certain 
sound  in  it,  Mr.  Leavenworth  looked  a  little  blank, 

193 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Miss  Blanchard  artfully  interposed.  "I  wish  I  could 
induce  Mr.  Hudson  to  think  he  might  perhaps  do 
something  with  mine ! " 

It  immediately  relieved  the  tension  and  made  Mr. 
Hudson  consider  her  with  great  gravity.  "If  your 
idea  resembles  your  personal  type,  Miss  Blanchard, 
I  quite  see  my  figure.  I  close  with  you  on  Intellectual 
Refinement,  Mr.  Leavenworth,  if  this  lady  will  sit  for 
us." 

Miss  Blanchard  demurred;  the  tribute  might  be 
ironic;  and  there  was  ever  afterwards  a  reflexion  of 
her  uncertainty  in  her  opinion  of  Roderick's  genius. 
Mr.  Leavenworth  responded  that,  with  all  deference 
to  Miss  Blanchard's  beauty,  he  desired  something 
less  breathingly  actual, —  more  monumentally  imper 
sonal.  "  If  I  were  to  be  the  happy  possessor  of  a  like 
ness  of  Miss  Blanchard,"  he  added,  "I  shouldn't 
wish  it  in  the  form  of  a  cold  symbol." 

He  spoke  as  if  the  young  woman's  charms  might 
compromise  the  chastity  of  his  conception,  but 
Roderick,  after  an  instant,  imperturbable,  had  drawn 
him  into  deep  waters.  Rowland,  nervously  conscious 
of  this,  appealed  meanwhile  to  the  judicious  Augusta. 
"Who  's  your  pompous  friend  ?" 

"A  very  worthy  man.  The  architect  of  his  own 
fortune  —  which  is  magnificent.  One  of  nature's 
gentlemen!" 

This  was  nobly  sufficient,  but  Rowland  turned  in 
vague  unrest  to  the  bust  of  Miss  Light.  Like  every 
one  else  in  Rome  by  this  time,  Miss  Blanchard  had 
an  opinion  on  that  young  woman's  beauty,  and,  after 
her  own  fashion,  she  expressed  it  in  a  quoteable  phrase. 

194 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"She  looks  half  like  a  Madonna  and  half  like  a 
ballerina!  " 

Mr.  Leavenworth  and  Roderick  arrived,  however, 
under  Rowland's  anxious  eyes,  at  an  understanding 
that  testified  not  a  little  on  the  part  of  each  to  the 
power  nobly  to  unbend,  and  the  young  master, 
with  a  habit  he  had  of  finally  coming  round,  in  a 
rush  of  indifferent  generosity,  from  some  first  crude 
challenge  to  patience  —  a  habit  that  Rowland,  whom 
it  had  caused  to  forgive  him  many  things,  had  known 
himself  privately  to  pronounce  irresistible  —  the 
young  master  good-naturedly  promised  to  do  his 
best  to  rise  to  his  client's  conception.  "His  con 
ception  be  hanged!"  Roderick  exclaimed  none  the 
less  after  Mr.  Leavenworth  had  departed.  "His  con 
ception  is  sitting  on  an  india-rubber  cushion  with  a 
pen  in  her  ear  and  the  lists  of  the  stock-exchange  in 
her  hand.  It 's  a  case  for  doing,  of  course,  exactly 
as  one  likes  —  yet  how  can  one  like,  by  any  possi 
bility,  anything  that  such  a  blatant  humbug  as  that 
possibly  can  ?  It 's  as  much  as  one  can  do  to  like  his 
awful  money.  I  don't  think,"  our  young  man  added, 
'that  I  ever  before  swallowed  anything  that  wanted 
so  little  to  go  down,  and  I  'm  doubtless  on  my  way 
now  to  any  grovelling  you  please." 

Mrs.  Light  meanwhile  had  fairly  established  her 
self  in  Roman  society.  "The  dear  God  knows  how," 
Madame  Grandoni  said  to  Rowland,  who  had  men 
tioned  to  her  several  evidences  of  the  lady's  pro 
sperity;  "but  a  door  is  forced,  of  course,  only  as 
a  heavy  piece  of  furniture  is  moved  — you  shut  your 
eyes  and  you  push  hard.  A  month  ago  she  knew  no 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

one  but  her  washerwoman,  and  now  I  'm  told  that 
the  cards  of  Roman  princesses  are  to  be  seen  on  her 
table.  Che  vuole?  She  has  opened  her  booth  at  the 
fair;  she  has  her  great  natural  wonder  to  show,  and 
she  beats  her  big  drum  outside.  Her  big  drum  is 
her  piano  nobile  in  a  great  palace,  her  brilliant 
equipage,  her  marvellous  bonnets,  her  general  be- 
dizenment,  and  the  phenomenon  in  the  booth  is  her 
wonderful  daughter.  Christina's  a  better  'draw'  than 
the  two-headed  calf  or  the  learned  pig.  She's  spend 
ing  a  lot  of  money,  and  you'll  see  that  in  two  or  three 
weeks  she  '11  take  upon  herself  to  open  the  season 
by  giving  a  magnificent  ball.  Of  course  it's  Christina's 
beauty  that  floats  her.  People  go  to  see  her  because 
they  're  curious." 

"  And  they  go  again  because  they  're  wonder- 
struck,"  said  Rowland. 

"  To  whom  do  you  say  it  ?  Has  n't  she  drawn  even 
me?  She  came  to  see  me  of  her  own  free  will  the 
other  day,  and  for  an  hour  she  was  deeply  interest 
ing.  I  think  she  's  an  actress,  but  she  believes  in  her 
part  while  she  's  playing  it.  She  had  taken  it  into 
her  head  to  believe  she  was  very  unhappy,  and  she 
sat  there,  where  you  're  sitting,  and  told  me  a  tale 
of  her  miseries  which  brought  tears  to  my  eyes.  She 
cried  profusely  —  she  cries  as  naturally  as  possible. 
She  said  she  was  weary  of  life  and  that  she  knew 
no  one  but  me  she  could  speak  frankly  to.  She  must 
speak  or  she  should  go  mad.  She  sobbed  as  if  her 
heart  would  break.  I  assure  you  it 's  well  for  you 
susceptible  young  men  that  you  don't  see  her  when 
she  sobs.  She  said  in  so  many  words  that  her  mother 

196 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  an  infamous  woman.  Heaven  knows  what  she 
meant  —  unless  perhaps  only  that  Mrs.  Light  makes 
debts  she  knows  she  can't  pay.  She  said  the  life 
they  led  was  horrible;  that  it  was  monstrous  a  poor 
girl  should  be  dragged  about  the  world  to  be  sold 
to  the  highest  bidder.  She  was  meant  for  better 
things;  she  could  be  perfectly  happy  without  those 
dreadfulnesses.  It  was  not  money  she  wanted.  I 
might  not  believe  her,  but  she  really  cared  for  serious 
things  —  for  the  good,  the  beautiful  and  the  true. 
Sometimes  she  thought  of  taking  poison." 

"What  did  you  say  to  that?" 

"  I  recommended  her  to  come  and  see  me  instead. 
I  would  help  her  about  as  much  and  I  was  on  the 
whole  less  unpleasant.  Of  course  I  could  help  her 
only  by  letting  her  talk  herself  out,  and  kissing  her 
and  patting  her  beautiful  hands,  and  telling  her  that 
if  she  would  be  very  patient  and  brave  and  quiet 
and  clever,  and  sit  very  tight  —  in  short  exercise 
all  the  cardinal  virtues  —  there  would  be  something 
good  for  her  in  the  end.  About  once  in  two  months 
I  expect  her  to  reappear  on  the  same  errand,  and 
meanwhile  quite  to  forget  my  existence.  I  believe 
I  melted  to  the  point  of  telling  her  that  I  would  find 
her  some  kind,  quiet,  respectable  husband,  and  even 
one  with  a  decent  fortune;  but  she  declared,  almost 
with  fury,  that  she  was  sick  of  the  very  name  of 
husbands,  which  she  begged  I  would  never  mention 
again.  And  in  fact  it  was  a  rash  offer;  for  I'm  sure 
that  there  's  not  a  man  of  the  kind  that  might  really 
make  a  woman  happy  but  would  be  afraid  to  marry 
a  young  person  of  her  particular  distinction.  Looked 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

at  in  that  way  she  's  certainly  very  much  to  be  pitied, 
and,  indeed,  altogether,  though  I  don't  think  she 
either  means  all  she  says  or,  by  a  great  deal,  says 
all  she  means,  I  feel  very  sorry  for  her." 

Rowland  met  the  two  ladies  about  this  time  at 
several  entertainments  and  looked  at  Christina  with 
a  kind  of  imaginative  attendrissement.  He  suspected 
more  than  once  that  there  had  been  a  passionate 
scene  between  them  about  coming  out,  and  he  won 
dered  what  arguments  Mrs.  Light  had  found  effect 
ive.  But  Christina's  face  told  no  tales,  and  she  moved 
about,  beautiful  and  silent,  looking  absently  over 
people's  heads,  barely  heeding  the  men  who  pressed 
about  her,  and  suggesting  somehow  that  the  soul  of 
a  world-wearied  mortal  had  found  its  way  into  the 
blooming  body  of  a  goddess.  "Where  in  the  world 
has  Miss  Light  been  before  she's  turned  twenty-one," 
observers  with  pretensions  to  earnestness  asked, 
"to  have  left  all  her  illusions  behind?"  And  the 
general  verdict  was  that,  though  she  was  incompar 
ably  beautiful,  she  was  too  disconcertingly  indifferent. 
She  was  scarcely  even  vain  enough.  Young  ladies 
who  were  not  indifferent,  and  yet  sometimes  perhaps 
not  beautiful  either,  were  free  to  reflect  that  she  was 
"not  at  all  liked." 

It  would  have  been  difficult  to  guess,  all  the  same, 
how  they  reconciled  this  conviction  with  a  variety 
of  contradictory  evidence  and  in  especial  with  the 
spectacle  of  Roderick's  inveterate  devotion.  All  Rome 
might  behold  that  he  at  least  "liked"  Christina 
Light.  Wherever  she  appeared  he  was  either  await 
ing  her  or  immediately  followed  her.  He  was  per- 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

petually  at  her  side,  trying  apparently  to  preserve 
some  broken  thread  of  talk,  the  fate  of  which  was, 
to  judge  by  her  face,  profoundly  immaterial  to  the 
young  lady.  People  in  general  smiled  at  the  radiant 
good  faith  of  the  handsome  young  sculptor,  and 
asked  each  other  if  he  really  supposed  flowers  of 
that  rarity  to  be  pluckable  by  mere  geniuses  who  hap 
pened  also  to  be  mere  Americans.  But  although 
Christina's  deportment,  as  I  have  said,  was  one  of 
high  inexpressiveness,  Rowland  had  drawn  from  Rod 
erick  no  suspicion  that  he  suffered  from  active  cruelty, 
and  he  was  therefore  surprised  at  an  incident  that 
occurred  one  evening  at  a  large  musical  party.  Rod 
erick,  as  usual,  was  not  in  a  state  of  effacement, 
and  on  the  ladies'  taking  the  chairs  which  had  been 
arranged  for  them  he  immediately  placed  himself 
beside  Christina.  As  most  of  the  gentlemen  were 
standing  his  position  made  him  as  conspicuous  as 
Hamlet  at  Ophelia's  feet.  Rowland  was  leaning 
somewhat  apart,  against  the  chimney-piece.  There 
was  a  long  solemn  pause  before  the  music  began,  and 
in  the  midst  of  it  Christina  rose,  left  her  place,  came 
the  whole  length  of  the  immense  room,  with  every 
one  looking  at  her,  and  stopped  before  him.  She  was 
neither  pale  nor  flushed;  she  had  a  dim  smile. 

"Will  you  do  me  a  favour?" 

"A  thousand!" 

"Not  now,  but  at  your  earliest  convenience. 
Please  remind  Mr.  Hudson  that  he  's  not  in  a  New 
England  village,  that  it  's  not  the  custom  in  Rome 
to  address  one's  conversation  exclusively,  night  after 
night,  to  the  same  poor  girl,  and  that  — " 

199 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  music  broke  out  with  a  great  blare  and  covered 
her  voice.  She  made  a  gesture  of  impatience,  and 
Rowland  offered  her  his  arm  and  led  her  back  to  her 
seat. 

The  next  day  he  repeated  her  words  to  Roderick, 
in  whom  they  produced  mere  unabashed  amusement. 
"Oh,  the  charming  'cheek'  of  her!  She  does  every 
thing  that  comes  into  her  head." 

"Had  she  never  asked  you  before  not  to  talk  to 
her  so  much  ?"  Rowland  enquired. 

"  On  the  contrary,  she  has  often  said  to  me  *  Mind 
you  now,  I  forbid  you  to  leave  me.  Here  comes  that 
beast  of  a  So-and-So.'  She  cares  as  little  about 
the  custom  of  the  country  as  I  do.  What  could  be 
a  better  proof  than  her  walking  up  to  you  with  five 
hundred  people  looking  at  her  ?  Is  that,  for  beautiful 
watched  girls,  the  custom  of  the  country  ?" 

"Why  then  should  she  take  such  a  step  ?" 

"Because  as  she  sat  there  the  notion  took  her. 
That  's  reason  enough  for  her.  I  've  imagined  she 
wishes  me  well,  as  they  say  here  —  though  she  has 
never  distinguished  me  in  such  a  way  as  that." 

Madame  Grandoni  had  foretold  the  truth;  Mrs. 
Light  a  couple  of  weeks  later  convoked  all  Roman 
society  to  a  brilliant  ball.  Rowland  went  late  and 
found  the  staircase  so  encumbered  with  flower-pots 
and  servants  that  he  was  a  long  time  making  his  way 
into  the  presence  of  the  hostess.  At  last  he  approached 
her  as  she  stood  making  curtsies  at  the  door  with  her 
daughter  by  her  side.  Some  of  Mrs.  Light's  curtsies 
were  very  low,  for  she  had  the  happiness  of  receiv 
ing  a  number  of  the  social  potentates  of  the  Roman 

200 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

world.  She  was  rosy  with  triumph,  to  say  nothing  of 
a  less  metaphysical  cause,  and  was  evidently  vastly 
contented  with  herself,  with  her  company  and  with 
all  the  omens  and  portents.  Her  daughter  was  less 
overtly  jubilant  and  distributed  her  greetings  with 
impartial  frigidity.  But  if  Christina  was  awfully  de 
tached,  as  they  said,  her  detachment  gave  the  greater 
relief  to  her  magnificent  beauty.  Dressed  simply  in 
vaporous  white  relieved  with  half  a  dozen  white 
roses,  the  perfection  of  her  features  and  of  her  per 
son,  and  the  mysterious  depth  of  her  expression, 
seemed  to  glow  with  the  white  light  of  a  splendid 
pearl.  She  recognised  no  one  individually  and  made 
her  salutations  slowly,  gravely,  with  her  eyes  on  the 
ground.  Rowland  felt  sure,  however,  that  for  him 
self  her  obeisance  was  subtly  overdone,  but  he  sighed 
patiently,  as  for  the  worrying  whim  of  it,  and  reflected 
as  he  passed  on  that  if  she  disliked  him,  which  was 
all  such  minor  ironies  could  mean,  he  had  nothing 
to  reproach  himself  with.  He  walked  about,  had  a 
few  words  with  Miss  Blanchard,  who,  with  a  fillet 
of  cameos  in  her  hair,  was  leaning  on  the  arm  of 
Mr.  Leavenworth,  and  at  last  came  upon  the  Cavaliere 
Giacosa,  modestly  stationed  in  a  corner.  The  little 
gentleman's  coat-lappet  was  decorated  with  an  enor 
mous  bouquet,  and  his  neck  encased  in  a  volum 
inous  white  handkerchief  of  the  fashion  of  thirty 
years  ago.  His  arms  were  folded  and  his  eyelids, 
before  the  glittering  scene,  contracted,  though  you 
saw  through  them  the  answering  glitter  of  his  in 
tensely  dark  vivacious  pupil.  He  immediately  em 
barked  on  an  elaborate  apology  for  not  having  yet 

201 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

manifested  as  he  felt  it  his  sense  of  the  honour  Row 
land  had  done  him. 

"I  'm  always  on  service  with  these  ladies,  you  see, 
and  that  's  a  duty  to  which  one  would  n't  willingly 
be  faithless  an  instant." 

"Evidently,"  said  Rowland,  "you  're  a  very  de 
voted  friend.  Mrs.  Light,  in  her  situation,  is  very 
happy  to  be  able  so  to  depend  on  you." 

"We  are  old  friends,"  the  Cavaliere  gravely  said. 
"Very  good  friends.  I  knew  the  signora  many  years 
ago,  when  she  was  the  prettiest  woman  in  Rome  — 
or  rather  in  Ancona,  which  is  even  better.  The  beau 
tiful  Christina  now  is  perhaps  the  very  greatest 
beauty  in  Europe." 

"There's  nothing  more  probable." 

"Very  well,  sir,  I  taught  her  to  read;  I  guided 
her  little  hands  to  touch  the  piano."  And  at  these 
faded  memories  the  Cavaliere's  eyes  glowed  with 
an  old  Roman  fire.  Rowland  half  expected  him 
to  proceed  with  a  flash  of  long-repressed  passion, 
"And  now  —  and  now,  sir,  they  treat  me  as  you 
observed  the  other  day!"  But  he  only  looked  out 
at  our  friend  hard  from  among  his  wrinkles,  and 
seemed  to  remark  instead,  as  with  the  social  dis 
cipline  of  a  thousand  years,  "Oh,  I  say  nothing 
more.  I  'm  neither  so  vulgar  nor  so  shallow  as  to 
complain!" 

Evidently  the  Cavaliere  was  both  deep  and  deli 
cate,  and  Rowland  could  but  repeat  his  respectful 
tribute.  "You  're  a  devoted  friend." 

"Eh,  che  vuole?  I  'm  a  devoted  friend.  A  man 
may  do  himself  justice  after  twenty  years!" 

202 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  after  a  pause  made  some  remark  about 
the  beauty  of  the  ball.  It  was  very  brilliant. 

"Stupendous!"  said  the  Cavaliere  solemnly.  "  It  's 
a  great  day.  We  have  four  Roman  princes,  to  say 
nothing  of  others."  And  he  counted  them  over  on 
his  ringers  and  held  up  his  hand  triumphantly. 
"And  there  she  stands,  the  girl  to  whom  I  —  I, 
Giuseppino  Giacosa — taught  her  alphabet  and  her 
piano-scales;  there  she  stands  in  all  her  grace, 
and  les  grands  de  la  terre  come  and  do  her  homage. 
Here,  in  his  quiet  corner,  her  old  master  permits 
himself  to  be  proud." 

"It  's  very  friendly  and  very  charming  of  him," 
Rowland  benevolently  said. 

The  Cavaliere  drew  his  lids  a  little  closer,  but 
strange  things  came  through.  "It  's  very  natural, 
signore  —  at  the  same  time  that  it 's  very  idiotic  too. 
Christina's  at  any  rate  a  brava  ragazza;  she  remem 
bers  my  little  services.  Here  comes,  however,"  he 
added  in  a  moment,  "the  young  Prince  of  the  Belle- 
Arti.  I  'm  sure  he  has  bowed  lowest  of  all." 

Rowland  looked  round  and  saw  Roderick  moving 
slowly  across  the  room  and  casting  about  him  his 
usual  high  light  of  contemplation.  He  presently 
joined  them,  nodded  familiarly  to  the  Cavaliere  and 
immediately  put  to  Rowland  the  largest  "Have  you 
seen  her  ?" 

"I  Ve  seen  Miss  Light,"  Rowland  answered  on  a 
smaller  scale.  "She  's  looking  remarkably  well." 

"I  'm  intoxicated  with  her  beauty!"  Roderick 
continued  so  loud  that  several  persons  turned  round. 

Rowland  saw  that  he  was  flushed,  and  laid  a 
203 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

hand  on  his  arm,  which  he  felt  tremble,  "If  you '11 
go  straight  away  with  me  I  '11  keep  you  company 
anywhere." 

"Go  straight  away?"  cried  Roderick  almost  an 
grily.  "Don't  you  suppose  I  intend  to  dance  with 
her?" 

The  Cavaliere  had  been  watching  him  attentively; 
he  gently  took  possession  of  the  other  arm.  "  Softly, 
softly,  dear  young  man.  Let  me  speak  to  you  as 
a  father." 

"Oh,  speak  even  as  a  mother  and  I  really  shall 
not  mind  it!" 

"  Be  very  reasonable  then  and  go  away." 

"Why  the  devil  should  I  go  away  ?" 

"  Because  you  're  too  charmingly  in  love,"  said 
the  Cavaliere. 

"I  might  as  well  be  in  love  here  as  in  the  streets." 

"Carry  your  love  as  far  as  possible  from  that 
young  woman.  She  '11  never  listen  to  you  —  she 
can't." 

"She  'can't'  ?"  demanded  Roderick.  "She  's  not 
the  sort  of  person  —  she  's  the  very  last  —  of  whom 
you  may  say  that.  She  can  if  she  will.  She  does  as 
she  chooses." 

"Up  to  a  certain  point.  Beyond  it  —  niente  /" 
And  the  Cavaliere's  two  forefingers  made  a  wonder 
ful  airy  sign.  "It  would  take  too  long  to  explain; 
I  only  beg  you  to  believe  that  if  you  think  you  can 
pretend  to  Miss  Light  you  prepare  for  yourself  de 
mauvais  draps.  Have  you  a  princely  title  ?  have  you 
a  princely  fortune  ?  No  ?  Then  you're  not  her  affair." 

And  the  Cavaliere  folded  his  arms  again,  like  a 
204 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

man  who  has  done  his  duty.  Roderick  wiped  his 
forehead  and  looked  askance  at  Rowland;  he  seemed 
to  be  guessing  his  thoughts,  and  it  might  have  been 
imaginable  that  they  made  him  colour.  But  he  smiled 
blandly  and,  addressing  the  Cavaliere,  "I  'm  much 
obliged  to  you  for  the  information,"  he  gracefully  de 
clared.  "Now  that  I  've  obtained  it,  let  me  tell  you 
that  I  'm  no  more  in  love  with  Miss  Light  than  my 
friend  here  is.  He  perfectly  knows  that.  I  admire 
her  —  yes,  immensely.  But  that  's  no  one's  business 
but  my  own,  and  though  I  have,  as  you  say,  neither 
a  princely  title  nor  a  princely  fortune,  I  mean  to  suf 
fer  neither  that  drawback  nor  those  who  can  boast  of 
its  opposite  to  diminish  my  right." 

"  If  you  're  not  in  love,  my  dear  young  man,"  said 
the  Cavaliere  with  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  an 
apologetic  smile,  "meno  male.  But  let  me  entreat 
you  as  an  affectionate  old  busybody  to  keep  a  watch 
on  your  sensibility.  You  're  young,  you  also  are 
admirably  beautiful;  you  have  a  brilliant  genius  and 
a  generous  heart.  But  —  I  may  say  it  almost  with 
authority  —  you  're  not  our  young  lady's  'fate.' ' 

Whether  Roderick  were  in  love  or  not,  he  was 
nettled  by  what  apparently  seemed  to  him  too  in 
sistent  a  negation  of  an  inspiring  possibility.  "You 
speak  as  if  she  had  made  her  choice!"  he  answered. 
"  Without  pretending  to  confidential  information  on  the 
subject,  I '  m  very  sure  she  has  done  nothing  of  the  sort." 

"No,  but  she  must  make  it  soon,"  said  the  Cava 
liere.  And  raising  his  forefinger,  he  laid  it  against  his 
under  lip.  "She  must  choose  very  great  things.  And 
she  will!" 

205 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  She  '11  do  exactly  as  her  inclination  prompts. 
She  '11  marry  the  man  who  pleases  her,  if  he  has  n't 
a  dollar.  I  know  her  better  than  you." 

The  Cavaliere  turned  perhaps  a  little  paler  than 
usual,  but  he  smiled  more  urbanely.  "No,  no,  caro 
signorino,  you  don't  know  her  better  than  I.  You've 
not  watched  her  day  by  day  for  twenty  years.  I  too 
have  admired  her.  She  is  a  brava  ragazza ;  she  has 
never  said  an  unkind  word  to  me;  the  blessed  Virgin 
be  thanked!  But  she  must  have  a  great  position  and 
a  brilliant  destiny;  they  've  been  marked  out  for 
her  and  she  '11  submit.  You  had  better  believe  me; 
it  may  save  you  some  rash  expense." 

"I  shall  see  what  I  shall  see."  But  Roderick's 
serenity  was  strained. 

"Then  you  '11  tell  me.  But  I  retire  from  the  dis 
cussion,"  the  Cavaliere  added.  "I  Ve  no  wish  to 
provoke  you  to  attempt  to  prove  to  me  that  I  'm 
a  vieille  bete.  You're  already  tres-monte." 

"No  more  than  is  natural  to  a  man  who  in  an 
hour  or  so  is  to  dance  a  cotillon  with  a  divinity." 

"A  cotillon  ?  has  she  promised  ?" 

Roderick  patted  the  air  as  for  pity  of  those  who 
pretended  to  guess  the  terms  of  the  understanding 
of  two  such  intimates.  "You  '11  see  what  you  will 
see!" 

The  Cavaliere  gave  an  exaggerated  shrug.  "You'll 
make  a  great  many  mourners!" 

"  What  a  mourner  won't  he  have  made  already!" 
Rowland  silently  echoed.  This  was  evidently  not 
the  first  time  that  reference  had  been  made  between 
Roderick  and  the  Cavaliere  to  the  young  man's  pos- 

206 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sible  illusion,  and  Roderick  had  failed  to  consider  it 
the  simplest  and  most  natural  course  to  say  in  three 
words  to  the  vigilant  little  gentleman  that  there  was 
no  cause  for  alarm  —  his  fancy  was  not  free.  Row 
land  hoped,  obscurely,  that  his  reticence  had  some 
basis  of  tact  that  was  not  immediately  apparent; 
then  he  turned  away  with  a  vague  pang:  there  was 
something  insecure,  so  to  say,  in  the  basis  of  Roder 
ick's  radiance.  The  tide  was  setting  to  the  regions 
of  supper,  and  he  drifted  with  it  to  the  door.  The 
crowd  at  this  point  was  dense,  and  he  was  obliged 
to  wait  for  some  minutes  before  he  could  advance. 
At  last  he  felt  his  neighbours  dividing  behind  him 
and,  looking  about,  he  saw  Christina  pressing  her 
way  forward  alone.  She  was  noticing  no  one,  and 
save  for  the  fact  of  her  being  so  at  her  ease  one 
would  n't  have  supposed  she  was  in  her  mother's 
house.  As  she  recognised  Rowland  she  beckoned 
and,  taking  his  arm,  motioned  him  to  lead  her  to  the 
quarter  of  the  spread  tables.  She  said  nothing  till 
he  had  forced  a  passage  and  they  stood  somewhat 
isolated. 

"Take  me  into  the  most  out-of-the-way  corner 
you  can  find,"  she  then  began,  "and  get  me  some 
where  a  piece  of  bread." 

"Nothing  more?  There  seems  to  be  everything 
conceivable." 

"  A  simple  roll.  Nothing  more,  on  your  peril. 
Only  bring  something  for  yourself." 

It  seemed  to  Rowland  that  the  embrasure  of  a  win 
dow  (embrasures  in  Roman  palaces  are  deep)  was 
a  retreat  sufficiently  obscure  for  Christina  to  execute 

207 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

whatever  design  she  might  have  contrived  against 
his  equanimity.  A  roll,  after  he  had  found  her  a  seat, 
was  easily  procured.  As  he  presented  it  he  remarked 
that,  frankly  speaking,  he  was  at  a  loss  to  understand 
why  she  should  have  selected  for  the  honour  of  so  great 
an  attention  a  poor  man  who  could  do  so  little  to 
please  her. 

"Ah  yes,  of  course  I  dislike  you!"  said  Christina. 
"To  tell  the  truth  I  had  forgotten  it.  There  are 
so  many  people  here  whom  I  dislike  more  that  when 
I  caught  your  eye  just  now  you  seemed  an  intimate 
friend.  But  I  Ve  not  come  into  this  corner  to  talk 
nonsense,"  she  went  on.  "You  mustn't  think  I  al 
ways  do,  eh  ?" 

"I  Ve  never  heard  you  do  anything  else,"  said 
Rowland  sturdily,  having  decided  that  he  would  keep 
only  on  the  broad  highroad  with  her. 

"Very  good.  I  like  your  frankness.  It's  quite  true. 
You  see  I  'm  a  strange  girl,  and  rather  bold  and  bad. 
D'abord,  I  'm  frightfully  egotistical.  Don't  flatter 
yourself  you  Ve  said  anything  very  clever  if  you  ever 
take  it  into  your  head  to  tell  me  so.  I  know  it  much 
better  than  you.  So  it  is;  I  can't  help  it.  I  'm  tired 
to  death  of  myself;  I  would  give  all  I  possess  to  get 
out  of  myself;  but  somehow  at  the  end  I  find  my 
self  so  vastly  more  interesting  than  nine-tenths  of 
the  people  I  meet.  If  a  person  wished  to  do  me  a 
favour  I  would  say  to  him:  'I  beg  you  with  tears  in 
my  eyes  to  interest  me.  Be  a  brute,  if  necessary,  to 
do  it;  only  be  something  positive  and  strong  —  some 
thing  that  in  looking  at  I  can  forget  my  detestable 
self!'  Perhaps  that 's  nonsense  too.  If  it  is  I  can't 

208 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

help  it  either.  I  can  only  apologise  for  the  nonsense 
that  I  know  to  be  such,  and  that  I  talk  —  oh,  for 
more  reasons  than  I  can  tell  you!  I  wonder  whether, 
if  I  were  to  try  you,  you  'd  understand  me." 

"I  'm  afraid  I  should  never  understand,"  said 
Rowland,  as  if  for  her  edification,  "why  a  person  on 
a  good  —  or  call  it  perhaps  a  bad  —  occasion  can 
willingly  talk  nonsense." 

"That  proves  how  little  you  know  about  women. 
But  I  like  your  hearty  directness.  When  I  told  you 
the  other  day,  with  my  usual  rudeness  to  every  one, 
that  you  bored  me  so,  I  had  an  idea  you  were  more 
formal  —  how  do  you  say  it  ?  —  more  guind'e.  I  'm 
very  capricious.  To-night  I  like  you  better." 

"Oh,  I  'm  not  at  all  guind'e"  said  Rowland 
gravely. 

"I  beg  your  pardon  then  for  thinking  so.  Now 
I  've  an  idea  that  you'd  make  a  faithful  friend;  an 
intimate  friend  —  a  friend  to  whom  one  could  tell 
everything.  For  such  a  friend  what  would  n't  I  give, 
don't  you  see  ?" 

Rowland  looked  at  her  in  stirred,  yet  in  quite  self- 
possessed,  speculation.  Was  this  a  sincere  yearning 
or  only  an  equivocal  purpose  ?  Her  beautiful  eyes 
looked  divinely  candid;  but  then,  if  candour  was 
beautiful,  beauty,  and  such  beauty,  somehow  carried 
questions  so  far!  "I  hesitate  to  recommend  myself 
out  and  out  for  the  office,"  he  said,  "but  I  believe 
that  if  you  were  to  depend  upon  me  for  anything  that 
a  friend  may  do  I  should  not  be  found  wanting." 

"Very  good.  One  of  the  first  things  one  asks  of  a 
friend  is  to  judge  one  not  by  isolated  acts,  but  by  one's 

209 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

whole  conduct.  I  care  for  your  opinion  —  I  don't 
know  why." 

"Nor  do  I,  I  confess!"  Rowland  laughed. 

"What  do  you  think  of  this  affair  ?"  she  went  on 
as  if  his  confession  did  n't  matter. 

"Of  your  ball  ?  Why,  it  's  a  very  grand  affair." 

"  It  's  horrible  —  that  's  what  it  is.  It  's  a  mere 
rabble.  There  are  people  here  whom  I  never  saw 
before,  people  who  were  never  asked.  Mamma  went 
about  inviting  every  one,  asking  other  people  to  invite 
any  one  they  knew,  doing  anything  to  have  a  crowd. 
I  hope  she's  satisfied.  It 's  not  my  doing.  I  feel  weary, 
I  feel  angry,  I  want  to  cry,  I  want  to  bite.  I  've  twenty 
minds  to  escape  into  my  room  and  lock  the  door  and 
let  mamma  s'en  tirer  as  she  can.  By  the  way,"  she 
added  in  a  moment,  without  a  visible  reason  for  the 
jump,  "can  you  tell  me  something  to  read  ?" 

Rowland  stared  at  the  disconnectedness  of  the 
question. 

"Can  you  recommend  me  some  books?"  she 
repeated.  "I  know  you  literally  have  some.  I  've  no 
one  else  to  ask.  We  never  see  one  in  our  lives  — 
where  should  we,  and  why  ?  We  make  debts  for 
clothes  and  champagne,  but  we  can't  spend  a  sou  on 
our  poor  benighted  minds.  And  yet,  though  you  may 
not  believe  it,  I  really  like  things  that  are  for  the 
mind." 

"I  shall  be  most  happy  to  lend  you  any  books," 
Rowland  said.  "  I  '11  pick  some  out  to-morrow  and 
send  them  to  you." 

"No  nasty  novels  then,  please,  if  you  don't  mind. 
I'm  tired  of  nasty  novels  —  at  one  time  I  read 

210 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

several.  I  never  was  a  bit  looked  after  in  that  way. 
I  can  at  all  events  imagine  situations  for  myself 
beyond  any  in  fiction  —  above  all  in  our  poor  bete 
English.  Some  good  poetry,  if  there  is  such  a  thing 
nowadays,  and  some  memoirs  and  histories  and  books 
of  facts." 

"You  shall  be  served.  Your  taste  agrees  with  my 
own." 

She  was  silent  a  moment,  looking  at  him.  Then 
suddenly,  "Tell  me  something  about  Mr.  Hudson," 
she  exclaimed.  "You  're  very,  very  great  friends  ?" 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Rowland;  "we  're  very,  very  great 
friends." 

"Tell  me  about  him.    Allans!   Begin." 

"Where  shall  I  begin?  You  know  him  for  your 
self." 

"No,  I  don't  know  him;  I  don't  find  him  so  easy  to 
know.  Since  he  has  finished  my  bust  and  begun 
to  come  here  disinterestedly,  he  has  grown  a  great 
talker.  He  says  very  fine  things;  but  does  he  mean  all 
he  says  ?" 

"  Few  of  us  do  that." 

"You  do,  I  imagine.  You  ought  to  know,  for  he 
tells  me  you  discovered  him."  Rowland  was  silent, 
and  Christina  continued :  "  Do  you  consider  him  very, 
very,  very  clever  ?" 

"Very,  very,  very" 

"His  talent's  really  distinguished?" 

"So  it  seems  to  me." 

"In  short,  he  's  a  great  genius?" 

"Yes,  call  him  a  great  genius." 

"And  you  found  him  vegetating  in  a  little  village 

211 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  took  him  by  the  hand  and  set  him  on  his  feet  in 
Rome?" 

"Is  that  the  popular  legend  ?"  Rowland  asked. 

"  Oh,  you  need  n't  be  modest.  There  was  no  great 
merit  in  it;  there  would  have  been  none  at  least  on 
my  part  in  the  same  conditions.  Great  geniuses  are 
not  so  common,  and  if  I  had  discovered  one  in  the 
wilderness  I  should  have  brought  him  out  in  the 
market-place  to  see  how  he  would  behave.  It  would 
be  excessively  amusing.  You  must  find  it  so  to  watch 
Mr.  Hudson,  eh  ?  Tell  me  this:  do  you  think  he  's 
going  to  be  a  real  swell,  a  big  celebrity,  have  his  life 
written,  make  his  fortune,  and  immortalise  —  as  the 
real  ones  do,  you  know  —  the  people  he  has  done  busts 
of  and  the  women  he  has  loved  ?" 

"Well,  that  's  a  large  order,"  said  Rowland.  "I 
don't  prophesy,  but  I  've  good  hopes." 

Christina  was  silent.  She  stretched  out  her  bare 
arm  and  looked  at  it  a  moment  absently,  turning  it  so 
as  to  see  —  or  almost  to  see  —  the  dimple  in  her 
elbow.  This  was  apparently  a  frequent  gesture  with 
her;  Rowland  had  already  observed  it.  It  was  as 
coolly  and  naturally  done  as  if  she  had  been  alone 
before  her  toilet-table.  "So  he  's  one  of  the  glories- 
to-be!"  she  suddenly  resumed.  "Don't  you  think  I 
ought  to  be  extremely  flattered  to  have  one  of  the 
glories-to-be  perpetually  hanging  about  ?  He  's  the 
first  such  young  lion  I  ever  saw,  but  I  should  have 
known  he  was  not  a  common  mortal.  There  's  some 
thing  strange  about  him.  To  begin  with  he  has  no 
manners.  You  may  say  that  it's  not  for  me  to  blame 
him,  since  I  Ve  none  myself.  That  's  very  true,  but 

212 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  difference  is  that  I  can  have  them  when  I  wish  to 
(and  very  charming  ones  too;  I  '11  show  you  some 
day);  whereas  Mr.  Hudson  will  never,  never,  never 
arrive  —  and  thank  God  after  all  —  at  the  least  little 
tenue.  For  somehow  one  sees  he  's  a  gentleman.  He 
seems  to  have  something  urging,  driving,  pushing 
him,  making  him  restless  and  defiant.  You  see  it  in 
his  eyes.  They're  the  finest,  by  the  way,  I  ever  saw. 
When  a  person  has  such  eyes  you  forgive  him  his  bad 
manners.  I  suppose  they  represent  what  's  called  the 
sacred  fire." 

Rowland  made  no  answer  except  to  ask  her  in  a 
moment  if  she  would  have  another  roll.  She  merely 
shook  her  head  and  went  on  — 

"Tell  me  how  you  found  him.  Where  was  he  — 
how  was  he  ?" 

"He  was  in  a  place  called  Northampton  Mass. 
Did  you  ever  hear  of  it  ?  He  was  studying  law.  I 
don't  say  he  was  learning  it." 

"It  appears  it  was  something  horrible,  eh  ?" 

"Something  horrible?" 

"This  little  village.  No  society,  no  pleasures,  no 
beauty,  no  interest." 

"You've  received  a  false  impression.  Northampton 
is  n't  so  gay  as  Rome,  but  Roderick  had  some  charm 
ing  friends." 

"Tell  me  all  about  them.  Who  were  his  charming 
friends?" 

"Well,  there  was  my  cousin,  through  whom  I  made 
his  acquaintance  —  a  delightful  woman." 

"Young  —  pretty?" 

"Yes,  a  good  deal  of  both.    And  very  clever." 

213 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Did  he  make  love  to  her?" 

"Not  in  the  least." 

"Well,  who  else?" 

"  He  lived  with  his  mother.  She  's  quite  the  best 
of  women." 

"Ah  yes,  I  know  all  that  one's  mother  is.  But  she 
does  not  count  as  society.  And  who  else  ?" 

Rowland  hesitated.  He  wondered  whether  Chris 
tina's  insistence  were  the  result  of  a  general  interest  in 
Roderick's  antecedents  or  of  a  particular  suspicion. 
He  looked  at  her;  she  was  looking  at  him  a  little  as 
kance,  waiting  for  his  answer.  As  Roderick  had  said 
nothing  about  his  engagement  to  the  Cavaliere  it  was 
probable  that  with  this  object  of  his  admiration  he 
had  not  been  more  "explicit.  And  yet  the  thing  was 
announced,  it  was  public;  the  other  person  concerned 
was  happy  in  it,  proud  of  it.  Rowland,  thinking  of  the 
other  person,  felt  a  kind  of  vicarious  resentment.  But 
he  kept  silence  a  moment  longer.  He  deliberated 
intently. 

"What  in  the  world  are  you  frowning  at?"  said 
Christina. 

"There  was  some  one  else  —  quite  his  principal 
friend;  the  young  lady  to  whom  he  's  engaged." 

Christina  stared,  raising  her  eyebrows.  "Ah,  Mr. 
Hudson  's  engaged  ?  "  she  said  very  simply.  "  Is  she 
interesting,  is  she  pretty  ?" 

"Very  interesting,  I  think,  as  engaged  to  him." 
Rowland  meant  to  practise  great  brevity,  but  in  a 
moment  he  found  himself  saying:  "And  I  also  call 
her  handsome." 

"  Ah  then  you  like  her,  too  ?  You  must  be  glad 
214 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  that,  and  so  must  he,"  Christina  went  on.    "  But 
why  don't  they  marry?" 

"Roderick  's  waiting  till  he  can  afford  it." 

Christina  slowly  put  out  her  arm  again  and  looked 
at  the  dimple  in  her  elbow.  "Ah,  il  y  a  qa?  He  never 
told  me." 

Rowland  perceived  at  this  moment  that  the  people 
about  were  ebbing  back  to  the  ball-room,  and  imme 
diately  afterwards  he  saw  Roderick  making  his  way 
to  themselves.  The  young  man  stood  the  next  mo 
ment  before  Miss  Light. 

"I  don't  claim  that  you  Ve  promised  me  the  cotil 
lon,"  he  said,  "  but  I  consider  you  've  given  me  hopes 
which  warrant  the  confidence  that  you  '11  dance  it 
with  me." 

Christina  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "Certainly 
I  Ve  made  no  promises,"  she  said.  "It  seemed  to  me 
that,  as  the  daughter  of  the  house,  I  should  keep  my 
self  free  and  let  it  depend  on  circumstances." 

"Then  I  very  earnestly  entreat  you."  And  the 
pressure  was  still  more  in  the  tone  than  in  the 
words. 

Christina  rose  and  began  to  laugh.  "You  say  that 
very  well,  but  the  Italians  do  it  better." 

This  assertion  seemed  likely  to  be  put  to  the  proof, 
as  Mrs.  Light  now  hastily  approached  leading  rather 
than  led  by  a  tall,  slim,  brown  young  man  whose  face 
was  like  a  prize-design  and  whose  race  was  vivid 
in  his  type.  "My  precious  love,"  she  cried,  "what 
a  place  to  hide  in!  We  've  been  looking  for  you 
for  twenty  minutes;  I  've  chosen  a  cavalier  for  you 
—  and  chosen  well!" 

215 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  young  man  disengaged  himself,  made  a  cere 
monious  bow,  clasped  his  two  hands  and  murmured 
with  an  ecstatic  smile  "May  I  venture  to  hope, 
dear  signorina,  for  the  honour  of  your  hand  ?" 

"It  would  be  fine  if  you  mightn't!"  said  Mrs. 
Light.  "The  honour 's  for  us!" 

Christina  hesitated  but  a  moment,  then  swept 
the  young  man  a  curtsey  as  profound  as  his  own 
salutation.  "You  're  very  kind,  Prince,  but  you  're 
too  late.  I  Ve  just  accepted!" 

"Ah,  voyons,  my  own  darling!"  murmured  — 
almost  moaned  —  Mrs.  Light. 

Christina  and  Roderick  exchanged  a  single  glance 
—  a  glance  caught  by  Rowland  and  which  attested 
on  the  part  of  each  something  of  a  new  conscious 
ness.  She  passed  her  hand  into  his  arm;  he  tossed 
his  ambrosial  locks  and  led  her  away. 

A  short  time  afterwards  Rowland  saw  the  young 
man  she  had  rejected  leaning  against  a  doorway. 
His  countenance,  constructed  and  regular,  was  yet  as 
heavy  as  if  it  had  been,  for  brow,  nose  and  mouth, 
all  cornice,  column  and  basement.  A  portrait-figure 
of  some  Renaissance  court  where  poison  was  used, 
his  rather  lustreless  part  there  would  have  been  to 
die  of  it.  But  he  was  distinguished  and  bored;  he 
fingered  his  young  moustache  broodingly,  as  if  it 
had  been  the  relic  of  an  ancestor,  and  looked  up 
nostalgically  at  the  rococo  mythological  world  of  the 
fine  old  florid  ceiling.  The  creatures  there  would 
have  indeed  been  more  his  Company  and  his  "form," 
Rowland  thought,  than  the  modern  polyglot  crowd. 
Rowland  espied  the  Cavaliere  Giacosa  hard  by 

216 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and,  having  joined  him,  asked  him  the  young  man's 
name. 

"Oh,  he  's  a  pezzo  grosso!    A   rich   Neapolitan. 
Prince  Casamassima." 


XI 


ONE  day  on  entering  Roderick's  lodging  (not  the 
modest  rooms  on  the  Ripetta  which  he  had  first  oc 
cupied,  but  a  much  ampler  apartment  on  the  Corso) 
Rowland  found  a  letter  on  the  table  addressed  to 
himself.  It  was  from  Roderick  and  consisted  of  but 
three  lines.  "I'm  gone  to  Frascati  —  for  medita 
tion.  If  I  'm  not  at  home  on  Friday  you  had  better 
join  me."  On  Friday  he  was  still  absent,  and  Row 
land  went  out  to  Frascati.  Here  he  found  his  friend 
living  at  the  inn  and  spending  his  days,  according 
to  his  own  account,  lying  under  the  trees  of  Villa 
Mondragone  and  reading  Ariosto.  He  was  melan 
choly,  almost  morose;  his  subjects  of  "meditation" 
seemed  not  to  have  been  happy.  Nothing  especially 
pertinent  to  our  narrative  had  passed  between  the 
two  young  men  since  Mrs.  Light's  ball  save  a  few 
words  bearing  on  a  passage  of  that  entertainment. 
Rowland  had  informed  Roderick  the  next  day  that 
he  had  told  Miss  Light  of  his  engagement,  and  had 
added:  "I  don't  know  whether  you  '11  thank  me, 
but  it  's  my  duty  to  let  you  know  it.  Miss  Light  per 
haps  has  already  done  so." 

Roderick  stared  hard  an  instant,  his  colour  rising. 
"Why  should  I  not  thank  you?  I  'm  not  ashamed 
of  my  engagement." 

"As  you  had  not  spoken  of  it  yourself  I  thought 
you  might  have  a  reason  for  not  having  it  known." 

218 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"A  man  does  n't  gossip  about  such  a  matter  with 
strangers,"  Roderick  rejoined;  and  the  ring  of  irri 
tation  was  in  his  voice. 

"With  strangers  —  no!"  said  Rowland,  smiling. 

Roderick  continued  his  work;  but,  after  a  moment, 
turning  round  with  a  frown,  "  If  you  supposed  I  had 
a  reason  for  being  silent,  pray  why  should  you  have 
spoken  ?"  he  demanded. 

"  I  did  n't  speak  idly,  my  dear  man.  I  weighed 
the  matter  first,  and  promised  myself  to  let  you 
know  immediately  afterwards.  It  seemed  to  me 
Miss  Light  had  better  have  it  in  her  head  that  your 
faith  and  honour  are  pledged." 

"The  Cavaliere  then  has  put  it  into  yours  that  I'm 
making  love  to  her?" 

"No;  in  that  case  I  should  n't  have  spoken  to  her 
first." 

"Do  you  mean  then  that  she  's  making  love  to 

9" 

mef 

"This  is  what  I  mean,"  said  Rowland  after  a 
pause.  "She  finds  you  fitfully  but  unmistakeably 
interesting,  and  she  's  pleased,  even  though  she  may 
feign  indifference,  at  your  finding  her  more  continu 
ously  so.  I  said  to  myself  that  it  might  save  her  some 
little  waste  of  imagination  to  know  without  delay 
that  you  're  not  at  liberty  to  become  indefinitely 
interested  in  other  women." 

"You  seem  to  have  taken  the  measure  of  my 
liberty  with  extraordinary  minuteness,"  Roderick 
observed. 

"You  must  do  me  justice  then.  I  'm  the  cause 
of  your  separation  from  Miss  Garland,  the  cause  of 

219 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

your  being  exposed  to  influences  and  opportunities 
here  that  she  hardly  even  dreams  of.  How  could  I 
ever  meet  her  again,"  Rowland  continued  with  much 
warmth  of  tone,  "if  at  the  end  of  it  all  she  should 
find  herself  short  ?" 

"I  had  no  idea  she  had  made  such  an  impression 
on  you.  You  're  too  anxious  and,  I  really  think, 
too  zealous.  I  take  it  she  did  n't  really  request  you 
to  look  after  her  affairs." 

"If  anything  happens  to  you  I  'm  accountable. 
You  must  understand  that." 

"That 's  a  view  of  the  situation  I  can't  accept — in 
your  own  interest  no  less  than  in  mine.  It  can  only 
make  us  both  very  uncomfortable.  I  know  all  I  owe 
you;  I  feel  it:  you  know  that.  But  I  'm  not  a  small 
boy  nor  a  country  lout  any  longer,  and  whatever  I  do 
I  do  with  my  eyes  open.  When  I  do  well  the  merit 's 
my  own;  if  I  do  ill  the  fault 's  my  own.  The  idea  that 
I  make  you  nervous  is  not  to  be  borne.  Dedicate 
your  nerves  to  some  better  cause,  and  believe  that  if 
Miss  Garland  and  I  have  a  quarrel  we  shall  settle  it 
between  ourselves." 

Rowland  had  found  himself  wondering  shortly  be 
fore  whether  possibly  his  brilliant  young  friend  were 
without  a  conscience;  now  it  dimly  occurred  to  him 
that  he  was  without  that  indispensable  aid  to  com 
pleteness,  a  feeling  heart.  Rowland,  as  we  have  al 
ready  intimated,  was  a  man  of  moral  passion,  and 
no  small  part  of  that  motive  force  had  been  spent  in 
this  adventure.  There  had  been  from  the  first  no  pro 
testations  of  friendship  on  either  side,  but  Rowland 
had  implicitly  offered  everything  that  belongs  to  friend- 

220 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ship,  and  Roderick  had  to  every  appearance  as  de 
liberately  accepted  it.  Rowland  indeed  had  taken 
an  exquisite  satisfaction  in  his  companion's  easy, 
inexpressive  assent  to  his  interest  in  him.  "Here  's 
an  uncommonly  fine  thing,"  he  said  to  himself;  "a 
nature  all  unconsciously  grateful,  a  man  in  whom 
friendship  does  the  thing  that  love  alone  generally 
has  the  credit  of —  knocks  the  bottom  out  of  pride." 
His  reflective  judgement  of  his  companion,  as  time 
went  on,  had  indulged  in  a  great  many  irrepressible 
vagaries;  but  his  affection,  his  sense  of  something 
in  the  other's  whole  personality  that  appealed  to  his 
tenderness  and  charmed  his  understanding,  had  never 
for  an  instant  faltered.  He  listened  to  Roderick's 
last  words,  and  then  he  smiled  as  he  rarely  smiled 

—  with  bitterness. 

"I  don't  at  all  like  your  telling  me  I'm  meddlesome. 
If  I  had  n't  been  meddlesome  I  should  never  have 
cared  a  fig  for  you." 

Roderick  flushed  deeply  and  thrust  his  modelling- 
tool  up  to  the  handle  into  the  clay.  "Say  it  outright 

—  as  you  want  to.    You  've  been  an  awful  fool  to 
believe  in  me." 

"I  don't  want  to  say  it,  and  you  don't  honestly 
believe  I  do,"  said  Rowland,  all  in  patience.  "It 
seems  to  me  I  'm  really  very  good-natured  even  to 
reply  to  such  nonsense." 

Roderick  sat  down,  crossed  his  arms  and  fixed 
his  eyes  on  the  floor.  Rowland  looked  at  him  for  some 
moments;  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  never  so 
clearly  perceived  him  as  all  strangely  and  endlessly 
mixed  —  with  his  abundance  and  his  scarcity,  his  power 

221 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  charm  and  his  power  to  hurt,  the  possibilities  of 
his  egotism,  the  uncertainties  of  his  temper,  the  de 
licacies  of  his  mind.  It  would  have  made  him  quite 
sick,  however,  to  think  that  on  the  whole  the  values 
in  such  a  spirit  were  not  much  larger  than  the  voids, 
and  he  was  so  far  from  having  ceased  to  believe  in 
it  that  he  felt  just  now  more  than  ever  that  a  fine 
moral  agitation,  adding  a  zest  to  life,  is  the  inevit 
able  portion  of  those  who,  themselves  unendowed, 
yet  share  romantically  the  pursuits  of  the  inspired. 
Rowland,  who  had  not  a  grain  of  genius  either  to 
make  one  say  he  was  an  interested  reasoner  or  to 
enable  one  to  feel  that  he  could  afford  a  dangerous 
theory  or  two,  adhered  to  his  conviction  of  the  es 
sential  salubrity  of  genius.  Suddenly  he  felt  a  rush 
of  pity  for  his  companion,  whose  beautiful  faculty  of 
production  was  thus  a  double-edged  instrument,  sus 
ceptible  of  being  dealt  in  back-handed  blows  at  its 
possessor.  Genius  was  priceless,  beneficent,  divine, 
but  it  was  also  at  its  hours  capricious,  sinister,  cruel; 
and  natures  ridden  by  it,  accordingly,  were  alter 
nately  very  enviable  and  very  helpless.  It  was  not 
the  first  time  he  had  had  a  sense  of  Roderick's  stand 
ing  passive  in  the  clutch  of  his  temperament.  It  had 
shaken  him  as  yet  but  with  a  half  good-humoured 
wantonness;  but  henceforth  possibly  it  meant  to 
handle  him  more  roughly.  These  were  not  times, 
therefore,  for  a  friend  to  have  a  short  patience. 

"When  you  err  you  say  the  fault 's  your  own,"  he 
said  at  last.  "  It 's  because  your  faults  are  your  own 
that  I  heed  them." 

Rowland's  voice,  when  he  spoke  with  feeling,  had 

222 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

an  extraordinary  amenity.  Roderick  sat  staring  a 
moment  longer  at  the  floor,  then  he  sprang  up  and 
laid  his  hand  affectionately  on  his  friend's  shoulder. 
"You  're  the  best  man  in  the  world,"  he  said,  "and 
I  'm  a  vile  brute.  Only,"  he  added,  in  a  moment, 
"  you  don't  understand  me!  "  And  he  looked  at  him  out 
of  such  bottomless  depths  as  might  have  formed  the 
element  of  a  shining  merman  who  should  be  trying, 
comparatively  near  shore,  to  signal  to  a  ruminating  ox. 

Rowland's  own  face  was  now  a  confession  of  his 
probably  being  indeed  too  heavy  to  float  in  such 
waters.  "What  is  it  now  ?  Explain." 

"Oh,  I  can't  explain!"  cried  Roderick  impatiently, 
returning  to  his  work.  "  I  've  only  one  way  of  express 
ing  my  deepest  feelings  —  it  's  this."  And  he  swung 
his  tool.  He  stood  looking  at  the  half-wrought  clay 
for  a  moment  and  then  flung  the  instrument  down. 
"And  even  this  half  the  time  plays  me  false!" 

Rowland  felt  that  his  irritation  had  not  subsided, 
but  he  nevertheless  risked,  for  a  decent  consistency's 
sake,  the  words  he  had  had  on  his  conscience  from  the 
beginning.  "We  must  do  what  we  can  and  be  thank 
ful,"  he  said.  "And  let  me  assure  you  of  this  —  that 
the  practice  of  your  talent  will  never  see  you  out  of  one 
kind  of  difficulty  only  just  to  expose  you  to  another." 

Roderick  pressed  his  hand  to  his  forehead  with 
vehemence,  and  then  shook  it  in  the  air  despairingly; 
a  gesture  that  had  of  late  become  frequent  with  him. 
"No,  no,  it  's  no  use;  you  don't  understand  me.  But 
I  don't  blame  you.  You  can't!" 

"You  think  it  will  then  ?"  said  Rowland,  to  whom 
it  had  suddenly  occurred  that  he  sincerely  might. 

223 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  think  that  when  you  expect  a  man  to  produce 
beautiful  and  wonderful  works  of  art  you  ought  to 
allow  him  a  certain  freedom  of  action,  you  ought  to 
give  him  a  long  rope,  you  ought  to  let  him  follow  his 
fancy  and  look  for  his  material  wherever  he  thinks  he 
may  find  it.  A  mother  can't  nurse  her  child  unless  she 
follows  a  certain  diet;  an  artist  can't  bring  his  visions 
to  maturity  unless  he  has  a  certain  experience.  You 
demand  of  us  to  be  imaginative,  and  you  deny  us  the 
things  that  feed  the  imagination.  In  labour  we  must 
be  as  passionate  as  the  inspired  sibyl;  in  life  we  must 
be  as  regular  as  the  postman  and  as  satisfactory  as  the 
cook.  It  won't  do,  you  know,  my  dear  chap.  When 
you  've  an  artist  to  deal  with  you  must  take  him  as  he 
is,  good  and  bad  together.  I  don't  say  they  're  pleas 
ant  creatures  to  know  or  easy  creatures  to  live  with; 
I  don't  say  they  satisfy  themselves  any  better  than 
other  people.  I  only  say  that  if  you  want  them  to  pro 
duce  you  must  let  them  conceive.  If  you  want  a  bird 
to  sing  you  must  n't  cover  up  its  cage.  Shoot  them, 
the  poor  devils,  drown  them,  exterminate  them,  if  you 
will,  in  the  interest  of  public  morality:  it  may  be  mo 
rality  would  gain  —  I  dare  say  it  would.  But  if  you 
suffer  them  to  live,  let  them  live  on  their  own  terms 
and  according  to  their  own  inexorable  needs!" 

"  I  've  no  wish  whatever  either  to  shoot  you  or  to 
drown  you,"  Rowland  perhaps  a  little  infelicitously 
laughed.  "  Why  defend  yourself  with  such  very  big 
guns  against  a  warning  offered  you  altogether  in  the 
interest  of  your  freest  development  ?  Do  you  really 
mean  that  you  've  an  inexorable  need  of  an  intimate 
relation  with  Miss  Light  ?  —  a  relation  as  to  the  felicity 

224 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  which  there  may  be  differences  of  opinion,  but 
which  can't,  at  best,  under  the  circumstances,  be 
called  innocent.  Your  last  summer's  adventures  were 
more  so!  As  for  the  terms  on  which  you  're  to  live, 
I  had  an  idea  you  had  arranged  them  otherwise." 

"I've  arranged  nothing  —  thank  God!  I  don't 
pretend  to  arrange.  I  'm  young  and  ardent  and  in 
quisitive,  and  I  'm  interested  in  that  young  woman. 
That  's  enough.  I  shall  go  as  far  as  the  interest  leads 
me.  I  'm  not  afraid.  Your  genuine  artist  may  be 
sometimes  half  a  madman,  but  he  's  never  even  half 
a  coward!" 

"I  see;  it's  a  speculation.  But  suppose  that  in  your 
speculation  you  should  come  to  grief  artistically  as 
well  as  —  what  shall  I  say  ?  —  more  intimately." 

"Well  then,  I  must  take  life  as  it  comes  —  I  can't 
always  be  arranging  grand  bargains.  If  I  'm  to 
fizzle  out,  the  sooner  I  know  it  the  better.  Sometimes 
I  half  suspect  it.  But  let  me  at  least  go  out  and  recon 
noitre  for  the  enemy,  and  not  sit  here  waiting  for  him, 
cudgelling  my  brains  for  ideas  that  won't  come!" 

Do  what  he  would,  Rowland  could  not  think  of 
Roderick's  theory  of  the  fell  play  of  experiment,  espe 
cially  as  applied  in  the  case  under  discussion,  as  any 
thing  but  a  pernicious  illusion.  But  he  saw  it  was  vain 
to  discuss  the  matter,  for  inclination  was  powerfully 
on  his  friend's  side.  He  laid  his  two  hands  on  his 
shoulders,  held  him  hard,  with  troubled  eyes,  then 
shook  a  mournful  head  and  turned  away. 

"  I  can't  work  any  more,"  said  Roderick.  "You  put 
an  end  to  that.  I'll  go  and  stroll  on  the  Pincian."  And 
he  tossed  aside  his  blouse  and  prepared  himself  for 

225 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  street.  As  he  was  arranging  his  necktie  before  the 
glass  something  occurred  to  him  that  made  him 
thoughtful.  He  stopped  a  few  moments  later,  as  they 
were  going  out,  with  his  hand  on  the  door-knob. 
"You  did  from  your  own  point  of  view  an  indiscreet 
thing,  you  know,  to  tell  Miss  Light  of  my  engage 
ment." 

Rowland  faced  him  in  a  manner  which  was  partly 
a  protest,  but  also  partly  a  recognition. 

"If  she's  the  particular  sort  of  vampire  you  seem 
to  take  her  for,"  Roderick  added,  "you've  only  given 
her  an  incentive." 

"And  that's  the  girl  you  propose  to  devote  yourself 
to  ?"  his  companion  cried. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  say  it,  mind !  I  only  say  —  well,  I  say 
that  the  next  time  you  mean  to  render  me  a  service 
it  will  be  safest  for  you  to  give  me  notice  before 
hand!" 

It  was  perfectly  characteristic  of  Roderick  that  a 
fortnight  later  he  should  have  let  his  friend  know  that 
he  depended  upon  him  for  society  at  Frascati  as  freely 
as  if  no  irritating  topic  had  ever  been  discussed  be 
tween  them.  Rowland  thought  him  generous,  and  he 
had  at  any  rate  a  liberal  faculty  of  forgetting  that  he 
had  given  you  any  reason  to  be  displeased  with  him. 
It  was  equally  characteristic  of  Rowland  that  he  com 
plied  with  his  friend's  summons  without  a  moment's 
hesitation.  His  cousin  Cecilia  had  once  told  him  that 
he  was  too  credulous  to  have  a  right  to  be  kind.  She 
put  the  case  with  too  little  favour,  or  too  much,  as 
the  reader  chooses;  it  is  certain  at  least  that  he  gave 
others,  as  a  general  thing,  the  benefit  of  any  doubt, 

226 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

reserving  for  himself  the  detriment.  Nothing  hap 
pened,  however,  to  suggest  to  him  that  he  was  de 
luded  in  thinking  that  Roderick's  secondary  impulses 
were  the  prompt  saving  ones,  and  that  his  nature  as'  a 
mixed  whole  tasted  distinctly  more  of  its  sweet  than  of 
its  bitter  parts.  The  wind  had  dropped,  at  all  events, 
for  the  time,  round  the  young  man's  head,  even  if  the 
cloud  had  not  lifted;  he  was  lazy,  listless  and  de 
tached,  but  he  had  never  been  so  softly  submissive. 
Winter  had  begun  by  the  calendar,  yet  the  weather 
was  divinely  mild,  and  the  companions  took  long  slow 
strolls  on  the  hills  and  lounged  away  the  mornings  in 
the  villas.  The  villas  at  Frascati  make  infinitely  for 
peace  and  are  rich  in  the  romantic  note.  Roderick,  as 
he  had  said,  was  meditating,  and  if  a  masterpiece  was 
to  come  of  his  meditations  Rowland  could  hold  his 
breath  for  it  with  the  best  will  in  the  world.  But 
Roderick  let  him  know  from  the  first  that  he  was  in 
a  miserably  sterile  mood,  and,  cudgel  his  brains  as  he 
would,  could  think  of  nothing  that  would  serve  for 
the  statue  he  was  to  make  for  Mr.  Leavenworth. 

"It 's  worse  out  here  than  in  Rome,"  he  said,  "for 
here  I'm  face  to  face  with  the  dead  blank  of  my  mind. 
There  I  could  n't  think  of  anything  either,  but  there  I 
found  things  that  helped  me  to  live  without  thought." 
This  was  as  free  a  renewed  tribute  to  forbidden  fruit 
as  could  have  hoped  to  pass;  it  seemed  indeed  to 
Rowland  surprisingly  free  —  a  lively  instance  of  his 
friend's  disassociated  manner  of  looking,  as  might 
have  been  said,  at  the  time  of  day.  Roderick  was 
silent  sometimes  for  hours,  with  a  vague  anxiety  in 
his  face  and  a  new  fold  between  his  even  eyebrows;  at 

227 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

other  times  he  restlessly  talked,  though  in  a  fitful, 
musing  monologue.  Rowland  could  have  felt  it  his 
duty  at  moments  to  offer  to  feel  his  pulse;  he  won 
dered  if  he  had  n't  symptoms  of  fever.  Roderick  had 
taken  a  great  fancy  to  Villa  Mondragone,  and  used  to 
pay  it  florid  compliments  as  they  strolled,  in  the  win 
ter  sunshine,  on  the  great  terrace  which  looks  toward 
Tivoli  and  the  iridescent  Sabine  hills.  He  carried  his 
volume  of  Ariosto  in  his  pocket  and  took  it  out  every 
now  and  then  to  spout  passages  to  his  companion.  He 
was  as  a  general  thing  very  little  of  a  reader;  but  at 
intervals  he  would  take  a  fancy  to  one  of  the  classics 
and  nose  over  it  as  for  the  flowers.  He  had  picked  up 
Italian  without  study,  and  gave  it  a  wonderful  sound, 
though  in  reading  aloud  he  ruined  the  sense  of  half 
his  admirations  and  felicities.  Rowland,  who  pro 
nounced  badly  but  understood  everything,  once  said 
to  him  that  Ariosto  was  not  the  poet  for  a  man  of  his 
craft;  a  sculptor  should  above  all  make  a  companion 
of  Dante.  So  he  gave  him  a  fine  old  copy  of  the 
Inferno,  a  high  rarity,  one  of  his  portable  treasures, 
and  advised  him  to  make  it  familiar.  Roderick  took  it 
responsively  —  perhaps  he  should  find  it  tonic;  but 
he  had  renounced  it  the  next  day:  he  had  found  it 
horribly  depressing. 

"A  sculptor  should  model  as  Dante  writes — you're 
right  there,"  he  said.  "But  when  his  genius  is  in 
eclipse  Dante  's  a  dreadfully  smoky  lamp.  By  what 
perversity  of  fate,"  he  went  on,  "has  it  come  about 
that  I  find  myself  a  sculptor  at  all  ?  A  sculptor  's 
such  a  confoundedly  special  genius;  there  are  so 
few  subjects  he  can  treat,  so  few  things  in  life  that 

228 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

bear  upon  his  work,  so  few  moods  in  which  he  him 
self  is  inclined  to  it."  (It  may  be  noted  that  Row 
land  had  heard  him  a  dozen  times  affirm  the  flat 
reverse  of  all  this.)  "If  I  had  only  been  a  painter  — 
a  little,  quiet,  docile,  matter-of-fact  painter  like  our 
friend  Singleton  —  I  should  only  have  to  open  my 
Ariosto  here  to  find  a  subject,  to  find  colour  and  at 
titudes,  stuffs  and  composition;  I  should  only  have 
to  look  up  from  the  page  at  that  mouldy  old  fountain 
against  the  blue  sky,  at  that  cypress  alley  wander 
ing  away  like  a  procession  of  priests  in  couples,  at 
the  crags  and  hollows  of  the  Sabines  there,  to  find  my 
picture  begun.  Best  of  all  would  it  be  to  be  Ariosto 
himself  or  one  of  his  brotherhood.  Then  everything 
in  nature  would  give  you  a  hint,  and  every  form  of 
beauty  be  part  of  your  stock.  You  would  n't  have 
to  look  at  things  only  to  say  —  with  tears  of  rage  half 
the  time  —  'Oh  yes,  it's  wonderfully  pretty,  but 
what  the  devil  can  I  do  with  it  ?'  But  a  sculptor  now, 
come!  That  's  a  pretty  trade  for  a  fellow  who  has 
got  his  living  to  make,  and  yet  is  so  damnably  con 
stituted  that  he  can't  work,  on  the  one  hand,  unless 
the  trumpet  really  sounds,  and  can't  play,  on  the 
other,  either  at  working  or  at  anything  else,  while 
he's  waiting  for  its  call.  You  can't  model  the  serge- 
coated  cypresses,  nor  those  mouldering  old  Tritons 
and  all  the  sunny  sadness  of  that  dried-up  fountain; 
you  can't  put  the  light  into  marble  —  the  lovely, 
caressing,  consenting  Italian  light  that  you  get  so 
much  of  for  nothing.  Say  that  a  dozen  times  in  his 
life  a  man  has  a  completely  plastic  vision  —  a  vision 
in  which  the  imagination  recognises  a  real,  valid 

229 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

subject  and  the  subject  reacts  on  the  imagination. 
It  's  a  remunerative  rate  of  production,  and  the  in 
tervals  are  convenient!" 

One  morning  as  the  young  men  were  at  their  ease 
on  the  sun-warmed  grass  at  the  foot  of  one  of  the 
slanting  pines  of  the  Villa,  Roderick  gave  himself  up 
to  a  free  and  beautiful  consideration  of  the  possible 
mischances  of  genius.  "  What  if  the  watch  should  run 
down,"  he  asked,  "  and  you  should  lose  the  key  ? 
What  if  you  should  wake  up  some  morning  and  find 
it  stopped  —  inexorably,  appallingly  stopped  ?  Such 
things  have  been,  and  the  poor  devils  to  whom  they 
happened  have  had  to  grin  and  bear  it.  The  whole 
matter  of  genius  is  a  mystery.  It  bloweth  where  it 
listeth,  and  we  know  nothing  of  its  mechanism.  If 
it  gets  out  of  order  we  can't  mend  it;  if  it  breaks 
down  altogether  we  can't  set  it  going  again.  We 
must  let  it  choose  its  own  pace  and  hold  our  breath 
lest  it  should  lose  its  balance.  It  's  dealt  out  in  dif 
ferent  doses,  in  big  cups  and  little,  and  when  you 
have  consumed  your  portion  it  's  as  naif  to  ask  for 
more  as  it  was  for  Oliver  Twist  to  ask  for  more 
porridge.  Lucky  for  you  if  you  've  got  one  of  the 
big  cups;  we  drink  them  down  in  the  dark  and 
we  can't  tell  their  size  until  we  tip  them  up  and  hear 
the  last  gurgle.  Those  of  some  men  last  for  life; 
those  of  others  for  a  couple  of  years.  I  say,  what  are 
you  grinning  at  ?"  he  went  on  as  in  the  best  possible 
faith.  "  Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  an  artist 
who  has  set  out  on  his  journey  on  a  high-stepping 
horse  to  find  himself  all  of  a  sudden  dismounted  and 
invited  to  go  his  way  on  foot.  You  can  number  them 

230 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

by  the  thousand  —  the  people  of  two  or  three  suc 
cesses;  the  poor  fellows  whose  candle  burnt  out  in 
a  night.  Some  of  them  groped  their  way  along  with 
out  it,  some  of  them  gave  themselves  up  for  blind 
and  sat  down  by  the  wayside  to  beg.  Who  shall  say 
that  I  am  not  one  of  these  ?  Who  shall  assure  me 
that  my  credit  is  for  an  unlimited  sum  ?  Nothing 
proves  it,  and  I  never  claimed  it;  or  if  I  did,  I  did  so 
in  the  mere  boyish  joy  of  shaking  off  the  dust  of  my 
desert.  If  you  believed  so,  my  dear  fellow,  you  did 
it  at  your  own  risk.  What  am  I,  what  are  the  best  of 
us,  but  a  desperate  experiment  ?  Do  I  more  or  less 
idiotically  succeed  —  do  I  more  or  less  sublimely 
fail  ?  I  seem  to  myself  to  be  the  last  circumstance 
it  depends  on.  I'm  prepared,  at  any  rate,  for  a  fizzle. 
It  won't  be  a  tragedy,  simply  because  I  sha'n't  as 
sist  at  it.  The  end  of  my  work  shall  be  the  end  of 
my  life.  When  I  've  played  my  last  card  I  shall 
cease  to  care  for  the  game.  I  'm  not  making  vulgar 
threats  of  the  dagger  or  the  bowl;  for  destiny,  I  trust, 
won't  make  me  further  ridiculous  by  forcing  me  pub 
licly  to  fumble  with  them.  But  I  have  a  conviction 
that  if  the  hour  strikes  here"  and  he  tapped  his  fore 
head,  "I  shall  disappear,  dissolve,  be  carried  off  in 
a  something  as  pretty,  let  us  hope,  as  the  drifted 
spray  of  a  fountain;  that  's  what  I  shall  have  been. 
For  the  past  ten  days  I  've  had  the  vision  of  some 
such  fate  perpetually  swimming  before  me.  My  mind 
is  like  a  dead  calm  in  the  tropics,  and  my  imagina 
tion  as  motionless  as  the  blighted  ship  in  the  'An 
cient  Mariner'!" 

Rowland  listened  to  this  outpouring,  as  he  often 

231 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

had  occasion  to  listen  to  Roderick's  flights  of  elo 
quence,  with  a  number  of  mental  restrictions.  Both 
in  gravity  and  in  gaiety  he  said  more  than  he  meant, 
and  you  did  him  simple  justice  if  you  privately  con 
cluded  that  neither  the  glow  of  purpose  nor  the  chill 
of  despair  was  of  so  intense  a  strain  as  his  gift  for 
expression  implied.  The  moods  of  an  artist,  his  exalta 
tions  and  depressions,  Rowland  had  often  said  to 
himself,  were  like  the  pen-flourishes  a  writing-master 
makes  in  the  air  when  he  begins  to  set  his  copy.  He 
may  bespatter  you  with  ink,  he  may  hit  you  in  the 
eye,  but  he  writes  a  magnificent  hand.  It  was  never 
theless  true  that  at  present  poor  Roderick  showed 
grave  symptoms  of  a  general  breakage  of  his  springs. 
As  to  genius  held  or  not  held  on  the  precarious 
tenure  he  had  sketched,  Rowland  had  to  confess 
himself  too  much  of  an  outsider  to  argue.  He  secretly 
but  heavily  sighed;  he  wished  his  companion  had 
had  a  trifle  more  of  little  Sam  Singleton's  pedestrian 
patience.  But  then  was  Sam  Singleton  a  man  of 
genius  ?  He  answered  that  such  questions  struck 
him  as  idle,  even  inane ;  that  the  proof  of  the  pud 
ding  was  in  the  eating;  that  he  knew  nothing  about 
bringing  dead  things  back  to  life  again,  but  that 
you  might  sometimes  pull  a  man  out  of  bed  who 
would  n't  get  up.  "Don't  worry  about  your  mood," 
he  prosaically  pleaded,  "and  don't  believe  there  's 
any  calm  so  utter  that  your  own  lungs  can't  ruffle 
it  with  a  breeze.  If  you've  pressing  business  to  attend 
to  don't  wait  to  settle  the  name  and  work  out  the 
pedigree  of  the  agent  you  despatch  on  it:  tumble  to 
work  somehow  and  see  what  it  looks  like  afterwards." 

232 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  've  a  prejudice  against  tumbling,  anywhere," 
Roderick  rejoined;  "the  pleasure  of  motion  for  me 
is  in  seeing  where  I  go.  If  I  don't  see  I  don't  move 
—  that  is  I  but  jump  up  and  down  in  the  same  place. 
In  other  words  I  'm  an  ass  unless  I  'm  an  angel. 
You  should  talk  to  Gloriani:  he's  an  ass  all  the  while, 
only  an  ass  for  a  circus,  who  can  stand  on  his  hind 
legs  and  fire  off  pistols.  But  you're  right,"  he  added 
after  a  while;  "this  is  unprofitable  talk,  and  it  makes 
my  head  ache.  I  shall  take  a  nap  and  see  if  I  can 
dream  of  a  bright  idea  or  two." 


XII 


HE  turned  his  face  upward  to  the  parasol  of  the  great 
pine,  closed  his  eyes  and  in  a  short  time  forgot  his 
hard  argument.  January  though  it  was,  the  mild  still 
ness  seemed  to  vibrate  with  faint  midsummer  sounds. 
Rowland  sat  vaguely  attentive ;  he  wished  that  for 
their  common  comfort  the  paste  of  Roderick's  com 
position  had  had  a  certain  softer  ductility.  It  was 
like  something  that  had  dried  to  colour,  to  brilliancy; 
but  had  n't  it  also  dried  to  brittleness  ?  Suddenly,  to 
his  musing  sense,  the  soft  atmospheric  hum  was  over- 
scored  with  distincter  sounds.  He  heard  voices  be 
yond  a  mass  of  shrubbery  at  the  turn  of  a  neighbour 
ing  path.  In  a  moment  one  of  them  began  to  seem 
familiar,  and  an  instant  later  a  large  white  poodle 
emerged  into  view,  slowly  followed  by  his  mistress. 
Miss  Light  paused  on  seeing  Rowland  and  his  com 
panion;  but  though  the  former  perceived  he  was 
recognised  she  gave  him  no  greeting.  Presently  she 
walked  directly  toward  him;  and  then,  as  he  rose  and 
was  on  the  point  of  rousing  Roderick,  she  laid  her 
finger  on  her  lips  and  motioned  him  to  forbear.  She 
stood  looking  at  the  deep  peace  of  Roderick's  sleep. 

"What  delicious  oblivion!"  she  said.  "Happy 
man!  Stenterello"  —  and  she  pointed  to  his  face  — 
"wake  him  up!" 

The  poodle  extended  a  long  pink  tongue  and  began 
to  lick  Roderick's  cheek. 

234 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Why,"  asked  Rowland,  "if  he's  happy?" 

"Oh,  I  want  companions  in  misery!  Besides,  I 
want  to  show  off  my  dog."  Roderick  roused  himself, 
sat  up  and  unconfusedly  stared.  By  this  time  Mrs. 
Light  had  approached,  walking  with  a  gentleman 
on  each  side  of  her.  One  of  these  was  the  Cavaliere 
Giacosa,  the  other  was  Prince  Casamassima.  "I 
should  have  liked  to  lie  down  on  the  grass  and  go  to 
sleep,"  Christina  added.  "But  it  would  have  been 
unheard  of." 

"Oh,  not  quite,"  said  the  Prince  in  English,  with 
a  fine  acquired  distinctness.  "There  was  already 
a  Sleeping  Beauty  in  the  Wood!" 

"Charming!"  cried  Mrs.  Light.  "Do  you  hear 
that,  my  dear  ?" 

"When  the  Prince  says  a  brilliant  thing  it  would 
be  a  pity  to  lose  it,"  said  the  girl.  "Your  servant, 
sir!"  And  she  smiled  at  him  with  a  grace  that  might 
have  reassured  him  if  he  had  thought  her  compliment 
ambiguous. 

Roderick  meanwhile  had  risen  to  his  feet,  and  Mrs. 
Light  began  to  exclaim  on  the  oddity  of  their  meeting 
and  to  set  forth  how,  the  day  being  lovely,  she  had 
been  charmed  with  the  idea  of  spending  it  in  the 
country.  And  who  would  ever  have  thought  of  find 
ing  Mr.  Mallet  and  Mr.  Hudson  asleep  under  a 
tree  ? 

"Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon;  I  was  very  wide 
awake,"  said  Rowland. 

"  Don't  you  know  that  Mr.  Mallet 's  Mr.  Hudson's 
sheep-dog?"  asked  Christina.  "He  was  mounting 
guard  to  keep  away  the  wolves." 

235 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"To  indifferent  purpose,  madam!"  said  Rowland, 
indicating  to  Mrs.  Light  her  daughter. 

"Is  that  the  way  you  spend  your  time  ?"  Christina 
demanded  of  Roderick.  "I  never  yet  happened  to 
learn  what  men  were  doing  when  they  supposed 
women  were  not  watching  them,  but  it  was  some 
thing  vastly  below  their  reputation." 

"When,  pray,"  said  Roderick,  smoothing  his 
ruffled  locks,  "are  women  not  watching  them?" 

"We  shall  give  you  something  better  to  do  at  any 
rate.  How  long  have  you  been  here  ?  It 's  an  age 
since  I  've  seen  you.  We  consider  you  as  an  old  in 
habitant,  and  expect  you  to  play  host  and  entertain 
us." 

Roderick  said  that  he  could  offer  them  nothing  but 
to  show  them  the  great  terrace  and  its  view;  and  ten 
minutes  later  the  little  group  was  assembled  there. 
Mrs.  Light  was  extravagant  in  her  satisfaction; 
Christina  looked  away  at  the  Sabine  mountains  in 
silence.  The  Prince  stood  by,  frowning  at  the  raptures 
of  the  elder  lady. 

"This  is  nothing,"  he  said  at  last.  "My  word  of 
honour.  Have  you  seen  the  terrace  at  San  Gaetano  ?" 

"Ah,  that  merueille"  murmured  Mrs.  Light 
amorously.  "I  suppose  it's  magnificent!" 

"  It 's  four  hundred  feet  long,  and  paved  with 
marble.  And  the  view  is  a  thousand  times  more 
beautiful  than  this.  You  see  far  away  the  blue,  blue 
sea  and  the  little  smoke  of  Vesuvio!" 

"Christina,  love,"  cried  Mrs.  Light  forthwith,  "the 
Prince  has  a  terrace  four  hundred  feet  long,  all  paved 
with  marble!" 

236 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

The  Cavaliere  gave  a  little  cough  and  began  to  wipe 
his  eye-glass. 

"Stupendous!"  said  Christina.  "To  go  from  one 
end  to  the  other  the  Prince  must  have  out  his  golden 
coach."  This  was  apparently  an  allusion  to  one  of 
the  other  items  of  the  young  man's  grandeur. 

"You  always  laugh  at  me,"  said  the  Prince.  "I 
know  no  more  what  to  say." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  sad  smile  and  shook  her 
head.  "No,  no,  dear  Prince,  I  don't  laugh  at  you. 
Heaven  forbid!  You  're  much  too  serious  an  affair. 
I  assure  you  I  feel  your  importance.  What  did  you 
inform  us  was  the  value  of  the  hereditary  diamonds  of 
the  Princess  Casamassima  ?" 

"Ah,  you  're  laughing  at  me  yet!"  said  the  young 
man,  who  had  turned  rather  pale  and  stiff. 

"It  does  n't  matter,"  Christina  went  on.  "We  Ve 
a  note  of  it;  mamma  writes  all  those  things  down  in 
a  little  book!" 

"  If  you  're  laughed  at,  dear  Prince,  at  least  it 's  in 
company,"  said  Mrs.  Light  caressingly;  and  she  took 
his  arm  as  if  to  combat  his  possible  displacement 
under  the  shock  of  her  daughter's  sarcasm.  But  the 
Prince  looked  heavy-eyed  at  Rowland  and  Roderick, 
to  whom  the  girl  was  turning,  as  if  he  had  much  rather 
his  lot  were  cast  with  theirs. 

"Is  the  villa  inhabited  ?"  Christina  asked,  pointing 
to  the  vast  melancholy  structure  that  rises  above  the 
terrace. 

"Not  privately,"  said  Roderick.  "It  's  occupied 
by  a  Jesuits'  college  for  little  boys." 

"Can  women  go  in  ?" 

237 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  'm  afraid  not."  And  Roderick  was  struck  with 
the  picture.  "  Fancy  the  poor  little  devils  looking  up 
from  their  Latin  declensions  and  seeing  Miss  Light 
shine  down  on  them!" 

"  I  should  like  to  see  the  poor  little  devils,  with  their 
rosy  cheeks  and  their  long  black  gowns,  and  when 
they  were  pretty  I  should  n't  scruple  to  kiss  them. 
But  if  I  can't  have  that  amusement  I  must  have  some 
other.  We  must  n't  stand  planted  on  this  enchanting 
terrace  as  if  we  were  a  row  of  flower-pots.  We  must 
dance,  we  must  feast,  we  must  do  something  romantic, 
poetic.  Mamma  has  arranged,  I  believe,  that  we  're 
to  go  back  to  Frascati  to  lunch  at  the  inn.  I  decree 
that  we  lunch  here  and  send  the  Cavaliere  back  there 
to  get  the  provisions!  He  can  take  the  carriage,  which 
is  waiting  below." 

Miss  Light  carried  out  this  programme  with  a  high, 
light  hand.  The  Cavaliere  was  summoned,  and  he 
stood  to  receive  her  commands,  uncovered  and  his 
eyes  cast  down,  as  if  she  had  been  a  princess  address 
ing  her  majordomo.  She,  however,  took  him  with 
friendly  grace  by  his  button-hole  and  called  him  a 
dear  good  old  Family  Friend  for  being  always  so  oblig 
ing.  Her  spirits  had  risen  with  the  occasion  and  she 
talked  irresistible  nonsense.  "Bring  the  best  they 
have,"  she  said,  "no  matter  if  it  ruins  us!  And  if  the 
best  is  very  bad  it  will  be  all  the  more  amusing.  I 
shall  enjoy  seeing  Mr.  Mallet  try  to  swallow  it  for 
propriety's  sake.  Mr.  Hudson  will  say  out  like  a  man 
that  it 's  horrible  stuff  and  that  he  '11  be  choked  first. 
Be  sure  you  bring  a  dish  of  macaroni;  the  Prince 
must  have  the  diet  of  the  Neapolitan  nobility.  But  I 

238 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

leave  all  that  to  you,  my  poor  dear  Family  Friend; 
you  know  what 's  good,  and  you  get  it  so  cheap.  Only 
be  sure,  above  all,  you  bring  a  guitar.  Mr.  Mallet 
will  play  us  a  tune,  I  '11  dance  with  Mr.  Hudson, 
and  mamma  will  pair  off  with  the  Prince,  of  whom  she 
is  so  fond!" 

And  as  she  concluded  her  recommendations  she 
patted  her  discreet  old  servitor  tenderly  on  the 
shoulder.  He  gave  Rowland  a  covert  look  charged 
with  reminders  -  "  Did  n't  I  tell  you  she  's  as  good 
as  she  's  clever,  and  as  clever  as  she  's  beautiful  ?" 

The  Cavaliere  returned  with  zealous  speed,  accom 
panied  by  one  of  the  servants  of  the  inn,  who  bore  a 
basket  containing  the  materials  of  a  rustic  luncheon. 
The  porter  of  the  villa  was  easily  induced  to  furnish  a 
table  and  half  a  dozen  chairs,  and  the  repast  when  set 
forth  was  pronounced  a  perfect  success;  not  so  good 
as  to  fail  of  an  amusing  disorder,  nor  yet  so  bad  as  to 
defeat  the  proper  function  of  repasts.  Christina  con 
tinued  to  display  the  most  charming  animation  and 
compelled  Rowland  to  reflect  privately  that,  think 
what  one  might  of  her,  the  harmonious  gaiety  of  so 
splendid  a  creature  would  not  have  been  an  impres 
sion  to  be  missed.  Her  good-humour  was  contagious. 
Roderick,  who  an  hour  before  had  been  descanting  on 
madness  and  suicide,  commingled  his  laughter  with 
her  lightest  sallies;  Prince  Casamassima  stroked  his 
young  moustache  and  found  a  fine  cool  smile  for 
everything;  his  neighbour,  Mrs.  Light,  who  had 
Rowland  on  the  other  side,  made  the  friendliest  con 
fidences  to  each  of  the  young  men,  and  the  Family 
Friend  contributed  to  the  general  hilarity  by  the 

239 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

solemnity  of  his  attention  to  his  plate.  As  for  Row 
land,  the  spirit  of  kindly  mirth  prompted  him  to  pro 
pose  the  health  of  this  useful  personage.  A  moment 
later  he  wished  he  had  held  his  tongue,  for  although 
the  toast  was  drunk  with  demonstrative  goodwill  the 
Cavaliere  received  it  with  a  brief  dignity  of  depreca 
tion  which  suggested  to  Rowland  that  his  diminished 
gentility  but  half  relished  honours  that  savoured 
possibly  of  patronage.  To  perform  punctiliously  his 
mysterious  duties  toward  the  two  ladies,  and  to 
elude  or  to  baffle  observation  on  his  own  merits  — 
this  clearly  exhausted  the  Family  Friend's  modest 
ambition.  Rowland  perceived  that  Mrs.  Light,  who 
was  not  always  remarkable  for  tact,  seemed  to  have 
divined  his  humour  on  this  point.  She  touched  her 
lips  with  her  glass,  but  she  said  nothing  gracious  and 
she  immediately  gave  another  direction  to  the  talk. 
The  old  man  had  brought  no  guitar,  so  that  when  the 
feast  was  over  there  was  nothing  to  hold  the  little 
group  together.  Christina  wandered  away  with 
Roderick  to  another  part  of  the  terrace;  the  Prince, 
whose  smile  had  vanished,  sat  gnawing  the  head  of  his 
cane  near  Mrs.  Light,  and  Rowland  strolled  apart 
with  the  Cavaliere,  to  whom  he  wished  to  address  a 
friendly  word  of  apology  for  the  light  he  had  played 
a  moment  over  his  preferred  obscurity.  The  Cava 
liere  was  a  mine  of  information  upon  all  Roman 
places  and  people;  he  told  Rowland  a  number  of 
curious  anecdotes  of  which  the  ancient  villa  was  more 
or  less  the  subject.  "If  history  could  always  be 
taught  in  this  fashion!"  thought  Rowland.  "It 's  the 
ideal  —  strolling  up  and  down  on  the  very  spot  com- 

240 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

memorated,  hearing  out-of-the-way  anecdotes  from 
deeply  indigenous  lips."  At  last,  as  they  passed,  Row 
land  observed  the  mournful  physiognomy  of  Prince 
Casamassima,  and  glancing  towards  the  other  end  of 
the  terrace  saw  that  Roderick  and  Christina  had  dis 
appeared  from  view.  The  young  man  was  sitting 
upright  in  an  attitude,  apparently  habitual,  of  cere 
monious  rigidity;  but  his  lower  jaw  had  fallen  and 
was  propped  up  with  his  cane,  and  his  dull  dark  eye 
was  fixed  upon  the  angle  of  the  villa  which  had  just 
eclipsed  Miss  Light  and  her  companion.  His  features 
kept  the  odd  rigour  of  their  symmetry,  and  his  expres 
sion  was  vacuous;  but  there  was  a  lurking  delicacy  in 
his  face  which  seemed  to  tell  you  that  nature  had  been 
making  Casamassimas  for  a  great  many  centuries, 
and,  though  she  adapted  her  mould  to  circumstances, 
had  learned  to  mix  her  material  to  an  extraordinary 
fineness  and  to  perform  the  whole  operation  with  a 
kind  of  insolent  art.  The  Prince  was  stupid,  Rowland 
suspected,  but  he  imagined  he  was  amiable,  and  he 
saw  that,  with  his  dim  aspirations  and  alarms,  he 
felt  himself  in  charge  of  the  very  highest  interests. 
Rowland  touched  his  companion's  arm  and  pointed 
to  the  melancholy  nobleman. 

"  Why  in  the  world  does  n't  he  go  after  her  and 
insist  on  being  noticed  ?" 

"Oh,  he's  very  proud!"  said  the  Cavaliere. 

"That 's  all  very  well,  but  a  gentleman  who  culti 
vates  a  passion  for  that  young  lady  must  be  prepared 
to  make  sacrifices." 

"  He  thinks  he  has  already  made  a  great  many.  He 
comes  of  a  very  great  family  —  a  race  of  princes  who 

241 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  endless  generations  have  sought  brides  only  with 
some  correspondence  of  name  and  condition.  But 
he  's  —  what  do  you  call  it  ?  —  very  hard  hit,  and  he 
would  certainly  stretch  the  point  for  Christina." 

"Then  it's  she  who  won't  stretch  her  point?" 

"Ah,  she's  very  proud  too!"  The  Cavaliere  was 
silent  a  moment,  as  if  he  were  measuring  the  pro 
priety  of  freedom.  He  seemed  to  have  formed  a  high 
opinion  of  Rowland's  discretion,  for  he  presently 
continued :  "  It  would  be  a  great  match,  for  she  brings 
him  neither  a  name  nor  a  fortune  —  nothing  but  her 
wit  and  her  beauty.  But  questa  ragazza  will  receive  no 
favours;  I  know  her  too  well.  She  would  rather  have 
her  beauty  blasted  than  seem  to  care  about  the  mar 
riage,  and  if  she  ever  accepts  the  Prince  it  will  be  only 
after  she  has  kept  him  for  months  on  his  knees." 

"But  she  does  care  about  it,"  said  Rowland,  "and 
to  bring  him  to  his  knees  she  's  working  upon  his 
jealousy  by  pretending  to  be  interested  in  my 
friend  Hudson.  If  you  said  more  you  would  say 
that,  eh  ?" 

The  Cavaliere's  sagacity  exchanged  a  glance  with 
Rowland's.  "By  no  means.  Christina  's  a  drole  de 
fille.  She  has  many  romantic  ideas.  She  would  be 
quite  capable  of  interesting  herself  seriously  in  a  re 
markable  young  man  like  your  friend  and  doing  her 
utmost  to  discourage  a  splendid  suitor  like  the  Prince. 
She  would  act  sincerely  and  she  would  go  very  far. 
But  it  would  be  unfortunate  for  the  remarkable 
young  man,"  he  added  after  a  pause,  "for  at  the  last 
she  'd  go  back!" 

"A  drole  de  fille  indeed." 
242 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"She  would  accept  the  more  brilliant  parti.    I  can 
answer  for  it." 

"And  what  would  be  the  logic  of  her  proceeding  ?" 
"She  would  be  forced.     There  would  be  circum 
stances,  conditions,  necessities,  des  raisons  majeures. 
I  can't  tell  you  more." 

"But  this  implies  that  the  rejected  suitor  would 
come  back  to  her.  He  might  grow  tired  of  waiting." 
"  Oh,  this  one 's  good  for  almost  anything.  Look  at 
him  now."  Rowland  obeyed,  and  saw  that  the  Prince 
had  left  his  place  by  Mrs.  Light  and  was  moving 
restlessly  to  and  fro  between  the  villa  and  the  parapet 
of  the  terrace.  Every  now  and  then  he  consulted  his 
watch.  "  In  this  country,  you  know,"  said  the  Cava- 
liere,  "  a  young  lady  never  goes  walking  alone  with  a 
beau  jeune  homme.  It  seems  to  him  very  strange." 
"  It  must  seem  to  him  monstrous,  and  if  he  over 
looks  it  he  must  be  very  much  in  love." 

"  Oh,  he  '11  overlook  it.  He  's  just  what  you  say." 
"Who  is  this  exemplary  lover  then;  what  is  he?" 
"  A  Neapolitan ;  of  one  of  the  oldest  houses  in  Italy. 
He  's  a  prince  in  your  English  sense  of  the  word;  un 
like  most  of  his  countrymen,  even  of  the  highest  pre 
tensions,  he  has  a  princely  fortune,  coming  mostly  from 
his  great  Sicilian  property.  He  's  very  young;  he  's 
only  just  of  age;  he  saw  the  signorina  last  winter  in 
Naples.  He  fell  in  love  with  her  from  the  first,  but  his 
family  interfered,  and  an  old  uncle,  a  high  ecclesiastic, 
a  Cardinal  probably  of  the  next  batch,  hurried  up  to 
Naples,  seized  him  and  locked  him  up.  Meantime  he 
has  passed  his  majority,  and  s'il  ne  fait  pas  de  betises 
he  won't  have,  in  the  exercise  of  his  freedom,  any  one 

243 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

but  himself  to  consider.  His  relations  are  moving 
heaven  and  earth  to  prevent  his  marrying  Miss  Light, 
and  they  've  sent  us  word  that  he  forfeits  this,  that 
and  the  other  if  he  takes  his  wife  out  of  a  certain  line. 
I  've  investigated  the  question  and  I  find  this  but  a 
fiction  to  frighten  us.  He  's  perfectly  untrammelled; 
but  the  estates  are  such  that  it 's  no  wonder  they  wish 
to  keep  them  in  their  own  hands.  It 's  a  rare  case, 
among  us,  of  unencumbered  property.  The  Prince 
has  been  an  orphan  from  his  third  year;  he  has 
therefore  had  a  long  minority  and  made  no  inroads 
upon  his  fortune.  Besides,  he  's  very  prudent  and 
shrewd;  I'm  only  afraid  that  some  day  he'll  pull 
the  purse-strings  too  tight.  All  these  years  his  affairs 
have  been  in  the  hands  of  his  reverend  uncle,  a  man  of 
wonderful  head,  who  has  managed  them  to  perfection 
—  paid  off  mortgages,  planted  forests,  opened  up 
mines.  It  is  now  a  magnificent  fortune;  such  a  for 
tune  as  with  his  name  would  justify  the  young  man  in 
pretending  to  any  alliance  whatsoever.  And  he  lays  it 
all  at  the  feet  of  that  little  person  who  's  wandering 
in  yonder  boschetto  with  a  penniless  artist." 

"He  's  certainly  a  phoenix  of  princes!  The  signora 
must  be  in  the  seventh  heaven." 

The  Cavaliere  looked  imperturbably  grave.  "The 
signora  has  a  high  esteem  for  his  personal  merit." 

"Well,  his  personal  merit,"  Rowland  returned 
with  a  smile;  "what  name  do  you  give  to  it?  " 

"Eh,  Prince  Casamassima 's  a  real  gran'  signore! 
He  's  a  very  good  young  man.  He  's  not  brilliant  nor 
witty,  but  he  won't  let  himself  be  made  a  fool  of. 
He  's  a  faithful  son  of  the  Church  —  and  it 's  lucky 

244 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  our  friends  that  they  too  are  children  of  the  great 
Mother.  He  's  as  you  see  him  there:  a  young  man 
without  many  ideas,  but  with  a  very  firm  grasp  of  a 
single  one  —  the  conviction  that  Prince  Casamas- 
sima  is  a  very  great  person,  that  he  greatly  honours 
any  young  lady  by  asking  for  her  hand,  and  that 
things  are  going  very  strangely  when  the  young  lady 
turns  her  back  upon  him.  The  poor  young  man  's 
terribly  puzzled.  But  I  whisper  to  him  every  day 
'Pazienza,  Signor  Principe!" 

"So  you  firmly  believe,"  said  Rowland  in  conclu 
sion,  "that  Miss  Light  will  accept  him  just  in  time 
not  to  lose  him  ?" 

"I  count  upon  it.  She  would  fill  a  great  position 
too  perfectly  to  miss  her  destiny." 

"And  you  hold  that  nevertheless,  in  the  mean 
while,  in  allowing  any  sort  of  voice  about  it  to  my 
friend  Hudson,  she  will  have  been  acting  in  good 
faith  ?" 

The  Cavaliere  lifted  his  shoulders  a  trifle,  and 
gave  an  inscrutable  smile.  "Eh,  caro  signore,  our 
young  lady  's  very  romantic!" 

"So  much  so,  you  intimate,  that  she'll  eventually 
give  way  in  consequence  not  of  a  change  of  sentiment, 
but  of  a  mysterious  outward  pressure  ?" 

"  If  everything  else  fails,  there 's  that  resource. 
But  it  will  be  mysterious,  as  you  say,  and  you  need  n't 
try  to  guess  it.  You  won't  make  it  out." 

"It  will  be  something  then  at  least  by  which  Miss 
Light  will  suffer?" 

"Not  too  much,  I  hope." 

"And  the  remarkable  young  man?    I  understand 

245 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

you  that  there  necessarily  can  be  nothing  but  dis 
appointment  in  store  for  the  infatuated  youth  who 
loses  his  heart  to  her?" 

The  Cavaliere  hesitated.  "He  had  better,"  he  said 
in  a  moment,  "go  and  pursue  his  studies  in  Florence. 
There  are  very  fine  antiques  in  the  Uffizi." 

Rowland  presently  joined  Mrs.  Light,  toward 
whom  her  noble  companion  had  not  yet  retraced  his 
restless  steps.  "That's  right,"  she  said;  "sit  down 
here;  I  've  something  serious  to  say  to  you.  I  'm 
going  to  talk  to  you  as  a  friend.  I  want  your  assistance. 
In  fact,  you  must  help  me;  it 's  your  duty.  Look  at 
that  unhappy  young  man." 

"Yes,  he  seems  unhappy." 

"He's  just  come  of  age,  he  bears  one  of  the  greatest 
names  in  Italy,  and  owns  one  of  the  greatest  proper 
ties,  and  he's  pining  away  with  love  for  my  daughter." 

"So  the  Cavaliere  tells  me." 

"It 's  none  of  the  Cavaliere's  business,"  said  Mrs. 
Light  sharply.  "Such  information  should  come  from 
me.  The  Prince  is  pining,  as  I  say;  he  's  consumed, 
he  takes  it  very  hard.  It 's  a  real  Italian  passion:  I 
know  what  that  means!"  And  she  rolled  an  eye  which 
seemed  to  commune  with  the  vividness  of  her  own 
annals.  "  Meanwhile,  if  you  please,  my  daughter  's 
hiding  in  the  woods  with  your  dear  friend  Mr.  Hud 
son.  I  could  cry  with  rage." 

"If  things  are  as  bad  as  that,"  said  Rowland,  "it 
seems  to  me  that  you  should  find  nothing  easier  than 
to  despatch  the  Cavaliere  to  bring  the  guilty  couple 
back." 

"Never  in  the  world!  My  hands  are  tied.  Do  you 
246 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

know  what  my  wretch  of  a  girl  would  do  ?  She  would 
tell  the  Cavaliere  to  go  about  his  business  —  heaven 
forgive  her!  —  and  send  me  word  that  if  she  had 
a  mind  to  she  would  roam  the  woods  till  midnight. 

O 

Fancy  the  Cavaliere  coming  back  and  delivering 
such  a  message  as  that  before  the  Prince!  Think  of  a 
sane  young  woman  making  a  mess  of  such  a  fortune! 
He  would  marry  her  to-morrow  at  six  o'clock  in  the 
morning." 

"It's  certainly  very  sad,"  said  Rowland. 

"That  cost's  you  little  to  say!  If  you  had  left  your 
precious  young  meddler  to  vegetate  in  his  native 
village  you  would  have  saved  me  a  world  of  worry." 

"Ah,  you  marched  into  the  jaws  of  danger,"  said 
Rowland.  "You  came  and  knocked  at  poor  Hudson's 
door." 

"In  an  evil  hour!  I  wish  to  goodness  you  would 
talk  with  him." 

"  I  talk  with  him  a  great  deal.  He  's  wonderful," 
said  Rowland,  "to  talk  with." 

"  I  wish  then  that  in  common  consideration  you 
would  take  him  away.  You  have  plenty  of  money. 
Do  me  a  favour.  Take  him  to  travel.  Go  to  the  East 
—  go  to  Timbuctoo.  Then,  when  my  daughter  has 
accepted  her  destiny  and  is  settled  to  it,"  Mrs.  Light 
added  in  a  moment,  "he  may  come  back  if  he 
chooses!" 

"Does  she  really  care  for  him  ?"  Rowland  abruptly 
asked. 

"The  deuce  knows  whom  she  really  cares  for  — 
even  to  me  who  have  so  known  and  so  watched  her 
she  's  a  living  riddle.  She  has  ideas  of  her  own,  and 

247 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

theories  and  views  and  inspirations,  each  of  which  is 
the  best  in  the  world  until  another  is  better.  She  's 
perfectly  sure  about  each,  but  they  are  fortunately  so 
many  that  she  can't  be  sure  of  any  one  very  long. 
They  may  last  all  together,  none  the  less,  long  enough 
to  dish  the  Prince's  patience,  and  if  that  were  to 
happen  I  don't  know  what  I  should  do.  I  should  be 
the  most  miserable  of  women.  It  would  be  too  cruel, 
after  all  I  have  suffered  to  make  her  what  she  is,  to 
see  the  labour  of  years  blighted  by  mere  wicked  per 
versity.  For  I  can  assure  you,  sir,"  Mrs.  Light  de 
clared,  "that  if  my  daughter  is  the  gifted  creature 
you  see,  I  deserve  some  of  the  credit  of  the  creation." 
Rowland  promptly  remarked  that  this  was  obvious, 
for  he  saw  that  the  poor  woman's  irritated  nerves 
required  the  comfort  of  some  accepted  overflow  and 
he  assumed  designedly  the  attitude  of  a  person  im 
pressed  by  her  sacrifices.  She  told  him  then  the  story 
of  her  efforts,  her  hopes,  her  dreams,  her  presenti 
ments,  her  disappointments,  in  this  exalted  cause  of 
Christina's  capture  of  a  prize  —  such  a  prize  as  would 
really  be  the  crown  of  such  a  fabric  of  visions.  It  was 
a  wonderful  rigmarole  of  strange  confidences,  and 
while  it  went  on  the  Prince  continued  to  pass  to  and 
fro,  stiffly  and  solemnly,  like  a  pendulum  marking  the 
time  allowed  for  the  young  lady  to  come  to  her  senses. 
Mrs.  Light  evidently  at  an  early  period  had  gathered 
her  maternal  and  social  appetites  together  into  a 
sacred  parcel,  to  which  she  said  her  prayers  and 
burnt  incense  —  which  she  treated  generally  as  a  sort 
of  fetish.  These  things  had  been  her  religion;  she 
had  none  other,  and  she  performed  her  devotions 

248 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

bravely  and  cheerily,  in  the  light  of  day.  The  poor 
old  fetish  had  been  so  caressed  and  manipulated,  so 
thrust  in  and  out  of  its  niche,  so  passed  from  hand  to 
hand,  so  dressed  and  undressed,  so  mumbled  and 
fumbled  over,  that  it  had  lost  by  this  time  much  of  its 
early  freshness  and  seemed  a  rather  battered  and  dis 
featured  divinity.  But  it  was  still  brought  forth  in 
moments  of  trouble,  to  have  its  tinselled  petticoat 
twisted  about  and  be  set  up  on  its  altar.  Rowland 
observed  that  Mrs.  Light  had  at  the  service  of  her 
tawdry  ideal  a  conscience  that  worked  in  the  most 
approved  and  most  punctual  fashion;  she  considered 
that  she  had  been  performing  a  pious  duty  in  bringing 
up  Christina  to  carry  herself,  "marked"  very  high 
and  in  the  largest  letters,  to  market;  and  when  the 
future  looked  dark  she  found  consolation  in  thinking 
that  destiny  could  never  have  the  heart  to  deal  a  blow 
at  so  deserving  a  person.  It  made  almost  as  much 
and  as  comically  for  the  topsy-turvy  as  if  he  had  seen 
the  good  stout  lady  herself  stand  on  her  head. 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  believe  in  presenti 
ments,"  said  Mrs.  Light,  "and  I  don't  mind  if  you 
think  they  're  rubbish.  I  've  had  one  for  the  last 
fifteen  years,  and  if  people  have  often  laughed  at  it 
they  've  never  laughed  me  out  of  it.  It  has  been  every 
thing  to  me;  I  could  n't  have  lived  without  it.  One 
must  believe  in  something,  hang  it!  It  came  to  me  in  a 
flash,  when  Christina  was  five  years  old.  I  remember 
the  day  and  the  place  as  if  it  were  yesterday.  She  was 
a  very  ugly  baby  —  I  give  you  that  for  a  remarkable 
fact;  for  the  first  two  years  I  could  hardly  bear  to 
look  at  her,  and  I  used  to  spoil  my  own  looks  with 

249 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

crying  about  her.  She  had  an  Italian  nurse  who  was 
very  fond  of  her  and  insisted  that  she  would  grow  up 
pretty.  I  could  n't  believe  her,  I  used  to  contradict 
her,  and  we  were  for  ever  squabbling.  I  was  just  a 
little  foolish  in  those  days  —  surely  I  may  say  it  now 

—  and  I  was  very  fond  of  being  amused.     If  my 
daughter  was  ugly,  at  least  it  was  not  that  she  re 
sembled  her  mamma;  I  had,  I  don't  mind  telling  you, 
no  lack  of  amusement.    People  accused  me,  I  believe, 
of  neglecting  my  little  girl;  if  I  ever  did  I  've  made 
up  for  it  since.   One  day  I  went  to  drive  on  the  Pincio 

—  I  was  in  very  low  spirits.     A  certain  person  —  I 
need  n't  name  him  —  had  trifled  with  a  confidence  — 
a  confidence  that  I  had  in  short  placed:  oh  my  dear, 
but  placed!    While  I  was  there  he  passed  me  in  a 
carriage,  driving  with  a  horrible  woman  who  had 
made  trouble  between  us.  I  got  out  of  my  carriage  to 
walk  about  and  at  last  sat  down  on  a  bench.    I  can 
show  you  the  spot  at  this  hour.    While  I  sat  there 
a  child  came  wandering  along  the  path  —  a  little  girl 
of  four  or  five,  very  fantastically  dressed,  in  all  the 
colours  of  the  rainbow.     She  stopped   in  front   of 
me  and  stared  at  me,  and  I  stared  at  her  queer  little 
dress,  which  was  a  cheap  imitation  of  the  costume 
of  one  of  these  contacting.    At  last  I  looked  up   at 
her   face   and   said   to    myself:  'Bless    me,  what   a 
beautiful  child!  what  a  splendid  pair  of  eyes,  what 
a  magnificent  head  of  hair!    If  my  poor  little  Chris 
tina  were  only  like  that!'     The  child  turned  away 
slowly,  but  looking  back  with  its  eyes  fixed  on  me. 
All  of  a  sudden  I  gave  a  cry,  pounced  on  it,  pressed 
it  in  my  arms,  covered  it  with  kisses.    It  was  Chris- 

250 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tina,  my  own  precious  child,  so  disguised  by  the 
ridiculous  dress  which  the  nurse  had  amused  herself 
in  making  for  her  that  her  own  mother  had  n't  recog 
nised  her!  She  knew  me,  but  she  said  afterwards  that 
she  had  not  spoken  to  me  because  I  looked  so  angry. 
Oh,  of  course,  after  what  I  had  seen,  the  poor  face  of 
me,  off  my  guard,  must  have  told  things!  I  rushed 
with  my  child  to  the  carriage,  drove  home  post  haste, 
pulled  off  her  rags  and,  as  I  may  say,  wrapped  her  up 
in  velvet  and  ermine.  I  had  been  blind,  I  had  been 
insane;  she  was  a  creature  in  ten  millions,  she  was  to 
be  a  beauty  of  beauties,  a  priceless  treasure!  Every 
day  after  that  the  certainty  grew.  From  that  time  I 
lived  only  for  my  daughter.  I  watched  her,  I  fondled 
her  from  morning  till  night,  I  worshipped  her.  I  went 
to  see  doctors  about  her.  I  took  every  sort  of  advice. 
I  was  determined  she  should  be  perfection.  The 
things  that  have  been  done  for  that  girl,  sir  —  you 
would  n't  believe  them;  they  would  make  you  smile! 
Nothing  was  spared;  if  I  had  been  told  that  she  must 
have  every  morning  a  bath  of  millefleurs,  at  fifty  francs 
a  pint,  I  would  have  found  means  to  give  it  to  her. 
She  never  raised  a  finger  for  herself,  she  breathed 
nothing  but  perfumes,  she  walked,  she  slept  upon 
flowers.  She  never  was  out  of  my  sight,  and  from  that 
day  to  this  I  've  never  said  a  nasty  word  to  her.  By 
the  time  she  was  ten  years  old  she  was  beautiful  as  an 
angel,  and  so  noticed,wherever  we  went,  that  I  had  to 
make  her  wear  a  veil  like  a  woman  of  twenty.  Her 
hair  reached  down  to  her  feet,  her  hands  were  the 
hands  of  an  empress.  Then  I  saw  that  she  was  as 
clever  as  she  was  beautiful  and  that  she  had  only  to 

251 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

play  her  cards.  She  had  masters,  professors,  every 
educational  advantage.  They  told  me  she  was  a  little 
prodigy.  She  speaks  French,  Italian,  German,  better 
than  most  natives.  She  has  a  wonderful  genius  for 
music  and  might  make  her  fortune  as  a  pianist  if  it 
were  not  made  for  her  otherwise.  I  travelled  all  over 
Europe,  every  one  told  me  she  was  a  marvel.  The 
director  of  the  opera  in  Paris  saw  her  dance  at  a 
child's  party  at  Spa,  and  offered  me  an  enormous 
sum  if  I  would  give  her  up  to  him  and  let  him  have  her 
educated  for  the  ballet.  I  said  'No,  I  thank  you,  sir; 
she  's  meant  to  be  something  better  than  a  princesse 
de  theatre'  I  had  a  passionate  belief  that  she  might 
marry  absolutely  whom  she  chose,  that  she  might  be  a 
princess  of  the  first  water.  I  've  never  given  it  up,  and 
I  can  assure  you  that  it  has  sustained  me  in  many 
embarrassments.  Financial,  some  of  them;  I  don't 
mind  confessing  that.  I  've  raised  money  on  that 
girl's  face!  I  've  taken  her  to  the  Jews  and  bidden  her 
put  off  her  veil  and  let  down  her  hair,  show  her  teeth, 
her  shoulders,  her  arms,  all  sorts  of  things,  and  asked 
if  the  mother  of  that  young  lady  was  n't  safe!  She  of 
course  was  too  young  to  understand  me.  And  yet,  as 
a  child,  you  would  have  said  she  knew  what  was  in 
store  for  her;  before  she  could  read  she  had  the 
manners,  the  tastes,  the  instincts  of  a  little  queen. 
She  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  shabby  things  or 
shabby  people;  if  she  stained  one  of  her  frocks  she 
was  seized  with  a  kind  of  frenzy  —  she  would  tear  it 
to  pieces.  At  Nice,  at  Baden,  at  Brighton,  wherever 
we  stayed,  she  used  to  be  sent  for  by  all  the  great 
people  to  play  with  their  children.  She  has  played  at 

252 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

romps  and  kissing-games  with  people  who  now  stand 
on  the  steps  of  thrones.  I  've  gone  so  far  as  to  think 
at  times  that  those  childish  kisses  were  a  sign  —  a 
symbol  —  a  pledge.  You  may  laugh  at  me  if  you  like, 
but  have  n't  such  things  happened  again  and  again 
without  half  so  good  a  cause,  and  does  n't  history 
notoriously  repeat  itself  ?  There  was  a  little  Spanish 
girl  at  a  second-rate  English  boarding-school  thirty 
years  ago!  .  .  .  The  Empress,  certainly,  was  a 
pretty  woman;  but  what 's  my  Christina,  pray  ?  I  Ve 
dreamt  of  it  sometimes  every  night  for  a  month.  I 
won't  tell  you  I  've  been  to  consult  those  old  women 
who  advertise  in  the  newspapers;  you  '11  call  me  an 
old  portiere.  Portiere  as  much  as  you  please,  when 
I  certainly  would  scrub  floors  for  her!  I  've  refused 
magnificent  offers  because  I  believed  that  somehow 
or  other  —  if  wars  and  revolutions  were  needed  to 
bring  it  about  —  we  should  have  nothing  less  than 
that.  There  might  be  another  coup  d'etat  somewhere, 
and  another  brilliant  young  sovereign  looking  out  for 
a  wife!  At  last,  however,"  Mrs.  Light  proceeded  with 
incomparable  gravity,  "since  the  overturning  of  the 
poor  king  of  Naples  and  that  charming  queen,  and  the 
expulsion  of  all  those  dear  little  old-fashioned  Italian 
grand-dukes,  and  the  dreadful  radical  talk  that 's 
going  on  all  over  the  world,  it  has  come  to  seem  to  me 
that  with  Christina  in  such  a  position  I  should  be 
really  very  nervous.  Even  in  such  a  position  she 
would  hold  her  head  very  high,  and  if  anything  should 
happen  to  her  she  would  make  no  concessions  to  the 
popular  fury.  The  best  thing,  if  one  would  be  prudent, 
seems  to  be  a  nobleman  of  the  highest  possible  rank 

253 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

short  of  belonging  to  a  reigning  stock.  There  you  see 
one  striding  up  and  down,  looking  at  his  watch  and 
counting  the  minutes  till  my  daughter  reappears!" 

Rowland  listened  to  all  this  with  a  large  compassion 
for  the  heroine  of  the  tale.  What  an  education,  what  a 
history,  what  a  school  of  character  and  of  morals!  He 
looked  at  the  Prince  and  wondered  whether  he  too  had 
heard  Mrs.  Light's  story.  If  he  had  he  was  a  brave 
man.  "  I  certainly  hope  you  '11  nail  him,"  he  said  to 
Mrs.  Light.  "You  've  played  a  dangerous  game  with 
your  daughter;  it  would  be  a  pity  not  to  win.  But 
there  's  hope  for  you  yet;  here  she  comes  at  last!" 

Christina  reappeared  as  he  spoke  these  words, 
strolling  beside  her  companion  with  the  same  Olym 
pian  command  of  the  air,  as  it  were,  not  less  than  of 
the  earth,  with  which  she  had  departed.  Rowland 
imagined  that  there  was  a  faint  pink  flush  in  her 
cheek  which  she  had  not  carried  away  with  her,  and 
there  was  certainly  a  light  in  Roderick's  eyes  that 
he  had  not  seen  there  for  a  week. 

"Bless  my  soul,  how  they're  all  looking  at  us!" 
she  cried  as  they  advanced.  "One  would  think  we 
were  prisoners  of  the  Inquisition!"  And  she  paused 
and  glanced  from  the  Prince  to  her  mother  and  from 
Rowland  to  the  Cavaliere,  and  then  threw  back  her 
head  and  burst  into  far-ringing  laughter.  "What  is  it, 
pray  ?  Have  I  been  very  improper  ?  Am  I  ruined  for 
ever  ?  Dear  Prince,  you  're  looking  at  me  as  if  I  had 
committed  the  unpardonable  sin!" 

"I  myself,"  said  the  Prince,  "would  never  have 
ventured  to  ask  you  to  walk  with  me  alone  in  the 
country  for  an  hour!" 

254 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"The  more  fool  you,  dear  Prince  —  as  I  should 
say  if  I  were  vulgar  and  rude.  Our  walk  has  been 
awfully  interesting.  I  hope  you,  on  your  side,  have 
enjoyed  each  other's  society." 

"My  dear  daughter,"  said  Mrs.  Light,  taking 
the  arm  of  her  predestined  son-in-law,  "  I  shall  have 
something  serious  to  say  to  you  when  we  reach  home. 
We  '11  go  back  to  the  carriage."  . 

"Something  serious!  Decidedly  it  is  the  Inqui 
sition.  Mr.  Hudson,  stand  firm  and  let  us  agree 
to  make  no  confessions  without  conferring  pre 
viously  with  each  other!  They  may  put  us  on  the 
rack  first.  Mr.  Mallet  I  see  also,"  Christina  added, 
"has  something  serious  to  say  to  me!" 

Rowland  had  been  looking  at  her  with  the  shadow 
of  his  lately-stirred  pity  in  his  eyes.  "Possibly,"  he 
said.  "But  it  must  be  for  some  other  time." 

"I'm  always,  you  know,  at  your  service.  I  see 
our  innocent  gaiety  is  gone.  And  I  only  wanted  to 
be  amiable!  Try  to  go  in  for  an  artless  ease!  It's 
very  discouraging.  Cavaliere,  you  alone  don't  look 
as  if  you  wanted  to  bite  me;  from  your  dear  old 
stupid  face,  at  least,  there  's  no  telling  what  you 
think.  Give  me  your  arm  and  take  me  away." 

The  party  took  its  course  back  to  the  carriage, 
which  was  waiting  in  the  grounds  of  the  villa,  and 
Rowland  and  Roderick  bade  their  friends  farewell. 
Christina  threw  herself  back  in  her  seat  and  closed 
her  eyes;  a  manoeuvre  for  which  Rowland  imagined 
the  Prince  was  grateful,  as  it  enabled  him  to  look 
at  her  without  seeming  to  depart  from  his  attitude 
of  distinguished  disapproval. 

255 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  found  himself  roused  from  sleep  early 
the  next  morning  to  see  Roderick  standing  before 
him  dressed  for  departure,  his  bag  in  his  hand. 
"  I  'm  off,"  he  said  —  "I'm  for  work  again.  An 
idea  has  come  to  me,  by  a  miracle,  and  I  must  try 
to  set  it  up  while  I  have  it.  Addio!"  And  he  went 
by  the  first  train.  Rowland  followed  at  his  ease. 


XIII 

ROWLAND  went  very  often  to  the  Coliseum;  he 
had  established  with  this  monument  and  with  its 
exuberance  of  ruin,  in  those  days  all  untrimmed,  a 
relation  of  the  tenderest  intimacy.  One  morning, 
about  a  month  after  his  return  from  Frascati,  as 
he  was  strolling  across  the  vast  arena,  he  observed 
a  young  woman  seated  on  one  of  the  fragments  of 
stone  which  are  arranged  along  the  line  of  the  an 
cient  parapet.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  seen 
her  before,  but  he  was  unable  to  give  her  a  frame. 
Passing  her  again  he  perceived  that  one  of  the  little 
red-legged  French  soldiers  who  were  at  that  time  on 
guard  there  had  made  her  the  object  of  an  irresistible 
military  advance.  She  smiled  upon  him  with  a  radi 
ance,  and  Rowland  recognised  the  address  (it  had  ever 
pleased  him)  of  a  certain  comely  Assunta  who  some 
times  opened  the  door  for  Mrs.  Light's  visitors.  He 
wondered  what  she  was  doing  alone  in  the  Coliseum, 
and  put  it  together  that  she  had  admirers  as  well 
as  her  young  mistress,  but  that,  being  without  the 
same  domiciliary  conveniences,  she  was  using  this 
massive  heritage  of  her  Latin  ancestors  as  hall  of 
audience.  In  other  words  she  had  an  appointment 
with  her  lover,  who  would  do  well  from  present  ap 
pearances  not  to  delay.  It  was  a  long  time  since 
Rowland  had  mounted  to  the  upper  tiers  of  the 
great  circus,  and,  as  the  day  was  splendid  and  the 

257 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

distant  views  promised  to  be  particularly  clear,  he 
determined  to  give  himself  this  pleasure.  The  cus 
todian  unlocked  the  great  wooden  wicket,  and  he 
climbed  through  the  winding  shafts  where  the  eager 
Roman  crowds  had  pressed  and  surged,  not  paus 
ing  till  he  reached  the  highest  accessible  stage.  The 
views  were  as  fine  as  he  had  supposed;  the  lights 
on  the  Sabine  mountains  had  never  so  seemed  the 
very  blurs  of  the  scroll  of  history.  He  lingered,  he 
gazed  to  his  satisfaction;  then  he  began  to  retrace 
his  steps.  In  a  moment  he  paused  again  on  an  abut 
ment  somewhat  lower,  from  which  the  glance  dropped 
dizzily  into  the  deep  vast  cup.  There  are  accidents 
of  ruggedness  in  the  upper  portions  of  the  Coliseum 
which  offer  a  very  fair  imitation  of  the  large  excre 
scences  on  some  Alpine  face.  In  those  days  a  mul 
titude  of  delicate  flowers  and  sprays  of  wild  herb 
age  had  found  a  friendly  soil  in  the  hoary  crevices, 
and  they  bloomed  and  nodded  as  on  the  shoulders 
of  a  mountain.  Rowland  was  turning  away  when 
he  heard  a  sound  of  voices  rise  from  below.  He 
had  but  to  step  slightly  forward  to  find  himself  over 
looking  two  persons  who  had  seated  themselves  on 
a  narrow  ledge  in  a  sunny  corner.  They  had 
apparently  an  eye  to  extreme  privacy,  but  they  had 
not  observed  that  their  position  was  commanded 
by  the  abutment  on  which  Rowland  stood.  One  of 
these  high  climbers  was  a  lady,  thickly  veiled,  so 
that  even  if  he  had  not  been  placed  directly  above 
her  he  could  not  have  made  out  her  face.  The 
other  was  a  young  man  whose  face  he  also  missed, 
but  who  presently  gave  a  toss  of  clustered  locks  that 

258 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  equivalent  to  a  master's  signature.  A  moment's 
reflexion  satisfied  him  of  the  identity  of  the  lady. 
He  had  been  unjust  to  poor  Assunta,  sitting  patient 
in  the  gloomy  arena;  she  had  not  come  to  it  on  her 
own  errand.  Rowland's  discoveries  made  him  hesi 
tate  and  delay.  Should  he  retire  as  softly  as  possi 
ble,  or  should  he  call  out  a  friendly  good-morning  ? 
While  he  was  debating  he  found  himself  hearing 
his  friends'  words,  which  availed  to  make  him  un 
willing  to  retreat,  and  yet  rendered  awkward  the 
disclosure  of  a  position  that  must  have  kept  him  an 
auditor. 

"If  what  you  say  is  true,"  said  Christina  with 
her  silvery  clearness  of  tone  —  it  made  her  words 
rise  with  peculiar  distinctness  to  Rowland's  ear  — 
"you  're  simply  as  weak  as  any  other  petit  \eune 
bomme.  I  'm  so  sorry!  I  hoped  —  I  really  believed 
—  you  were  strong." 

"No,  I  'm  not  weak,"  Roderick  returned  with 
vehemence;  "I  maintain  I'm  not  weak!  I'm  in 
complete  perhaps;  but  I  can't  help  that.  Incom 
pleteness  is  a  matter  of  the  outfit.  Weakness  is  a 
matter  of  the  will." 

"Incomplete  then  be  it,  since  you  hold  to  the 
word.  It's  the  same  thing,"  Christina  went  on,  "so 
long  as  it  keeps  you  from  splendid  achievement.  Is 
it  written  then  that  I  shall  really  never  know  what 
I've  so  often  dreamed  of?" 

"What  then  have  you  dreamed  of?" 

"A  man  whom  I  can  have  the  luxury  of  respect 
ing!"  cried  the  girl  with  a  sudden  flame.  "A  man 
whom  I  can  admire  enough  to  make  me  know  I  'm 

259 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

doing  it.  I  meet  one,  as  I  Ve  met  more  than  one 
before,  whom  I  fondly  believe  to  be  cast  in  a  bigger 
mould  than  most  of  the  vulgar  human  breed  —  to 
be  large  in  character,  great  in  talent,  strong  in  will. 
In  such  a  man  as  that,  I  say,  one's  weary  imagina 
tion  at  last  may  rest;  or  may  wander  if  it  will,  but 
with  the  sense  of  coming  home  again  a  greater  ad 
venture  than  any  other.  When  I  first  knew  you  I 
gave  no  sign,  but  you  had  struck  me.  I  observed 
you  as  women  observe,  and  I  fancied  you  had  the 
sacred  fire." 

"Before  heaven  I  believe  I  have!"  Roderick  broke 
out. 

"Ah,  but  so  very  little  of  it!  It  flickers  and  trem 
bles  and  sputters;  it  goes  out,  you  tell  me,  for  whole 
weeks  together.  From  your  own  account  it  does  n't 
much  look  as  if  you  'd  take  either  yourself  or  any 
one  else  very  far." 

"I  say  those  things  sometimes  myself,"  came  in 
Roderick's  voice,  "but  when  I  hear  you  say  them 
they  make  me  feel  as  if  I  could  scale  the  skies." 

"  Ah,  the  man  who 's  strong  with  what  I  call 
strength,"  Christina  replied,  "would  neither  rise 
nor  fall  by  anything  I  could  say!  I  'm  a  poor  weak 
woman;  I  've  no  strength  myself,  and  I  can  give 
no  strength.  I  'm  a  miserable  medley  of  vanity 
and  folly.  I  'm  silly,  I  'm  ignorant,  I  'm  affected, 
I  'm  false.  I  'm  the  fruit  of  a  horrible  education 
sown  on  a  worthless  soil.  I  'm  all  that,  and  yet  I 
believe  I  have  one  merit.  I  should  know  a  great 
character  when  I  saw  it,  and  I  should  delight  in  it 
with  a  generosity  that  would  do  something  toward 

260 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  remission  of  my  sins.  For  a  man  who  should 
really  give  me  a  certain  feeling  —  I  have  never  had 
it,  but  I  should  know  it  when  it  came  —  I  would 
send  Prince  Casamassima  and  his  millions  to  per 
dition.  I  don't  know  what  you  think  of  me  for  say 
ing  all  this;  I  suppose  we  have  not  climbed  up  here 
under  the  skies  to  play  propriety.  Why  have  you 
been  at  such  pains  to  assure  me,  after  all,  that  you 
are  a  little  man  and  not  a  great  one,  a  weak  one  and 
not  a  strong  ?  I  innocently  imagined  at  first  that 
your  eyes  —  because  they  're  so  beautiful  —  de 
clared  you  strong.  I  think  they  declare  nothing 
but  just  their  beauty.  That  would  be  enough  —  if 
you  were  a  being  like  me.  But  I  want  some  one  so 
much  better  than  myself !  Your  voice,  at  any  rate, 
caro  mio,  condemns  you;  I  always  wondered  at  it; 
it 's  not  the  voice  of  a  conqueror!" 

"Give  me  something  to  conquer,"  Roderick  an 
swered,  "and  when  I  say  that  I  thank  you  from  my 
soul,  my  voice,  whatever  you  think  of  it,  shall  speak 
the  truth!" 

Christina  for  a  moment  said  nothing,  and  Row 
land  was  now  too  interested  to  think  of  moving.  "  You 
pretend  to  such  devotion,"  she  went  on,  "and  yet 
I  'm  sure  you  have  never  really  chosen  between  me 
and  that  person  in  America." 

"Do  me  the  great  favour  not  to  speak  of  her," 
Roderick  almost  groaned. 

"Why  not?  I  say  no  ill  of  her,  and  I  think  all 
kinds  of  good.  I  'm  certain  she  is  a  far  better  girl 
than  I,  and  far  more  likely  to  make  you  happy." 

"This  is  happiness,  this  present  palpable  mo- 
261 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

merit,"  said  Roderick;  "though  you  have  such  a 
genius  for  knowing  what  will  be  most  odious  to  me." 

"It's  greater  happiness  than  you  deserve  then! 
You  've  never  chosen,  I  say;  you  've  been  afraid 
to  choose.  You  've  never  really  looked  in  the  face 
the  fact  that  you  're  false,  that  you  've  broken  your 
faith.  You  've  never  looked  at  it  and  seen  that  it 
was  hideous  and  yet  said  'No  matter,  I  '11  brave 
the  penalty,  I  '11  bear  the  shame.'  You  've  closed 
your  eyes;  you  've  tried  to  stifle  remembrance,  to 
persuade  yourself  that  you  were  not  behaving  so 
badly  as  you  seemed  to  be,  that  there  would  be  some 
way,  after  all,  of  doing  what  you  liked  and  yet  es 
caping  trouble.  You  've  faltered  and  dodged  and 
drifted,  you  've  gone  on  from  accident  to  accident, 
and  I  'm  sure  that  at  this  present  moment  you  can't 
tell  what  it  is  you  really  wish." 

Roderick  was  sitting  with  his  knees  drawn  up 
and  bent  and  his  hands  clasped  round  his  legs.  He 
dropped  his  head,  resting  his  forehead  on  his  knees. 

Christina  went  on  with  a  sort  of  infernal  pitiless 
calm.  "I  believe  that  really  you  don't  greatly  care 
for  your  friend  in  America  any  more  than  you  do 
for  me.  You  're  one  of  the  men  who  care  only  for 
themselves  and  for  what  they  can  make  of  them 
selves.  That 's  very  well  when  they  can  make  some 
thing  great,  and  I  could  interest  myself  in  a  man  of 
extraordinary  power  who  should  wish  to  turn  all 
his  passions  to  account.  But  if  the  power  should 
turn  out  to  be,  after  all,  rather  ordinary  ?  Fancy  feel 
ing  one's  self  ground  in  the  mill  of  a  third-rate 
talent!  If  you  've  doubts  about  yourself  I  can't 

262 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

reassure  you;  I  've  too  many  doubts  myself  about 
everything  in  this  weary  world.  You  've  gone  up 
like  a  rocket  in  your  profession,  they  tell  me;  are 
you  going  to  come  down  like  the  stick  ?  I  don't  pre 
tend  to  know;  I  repeat  frankly  what  I  've  said 
before  —  that  all  modern  sculpture  seems  to  me 
vulgar,  and  that  the  only  things  I  care  for  are  some 
of  the  most  battered  of  the  antiques  of  the  Vatican. 
No,  no,  I  can't  reassure  you;  and  when  you  tell  me 
—  with  a  confidence  in  my  discretion  of  which  cer 
tainly  I  'm  duly  sensible  —  that  at  times  you  feel 
terribly  scant,  why,  I  can  only  answer,  'Ah  then, 
my  poor  friend,  I  'm  afraid  you  are  scant!'  The 
language  I  should  like  to  hear  from  a  person  offer 
ing  me  his  career  is  that  of  a  confidence  that  would 
knock  me  down." 

Roderick  raised  his  head,  but  said  nothing;  he 
seemed  to  be  making  with  his  companion  some  long, 
deep,  dumb  exchange.  The  result  of  it  was  that  he 
flung  himself  back  at  last  with  an  incoherent  wail. 
Rowland,  admonished  by  the  silence,  had  been  on 
the  point  of  turning  away,  but  was  arrested  by  a 
sudden  gesture  on  Christina's  part.  She  pointed 
a  moment  into  the  blue  air,  and  Roderick  followed 
the  direction  of  her  gesture. 

"Is  that  little  flower  we  see  outlined  against  that 
dark  niche,"  she  asked,  "as  intensely  blue  as  it 
looks  through  my  veil  ?"  She  spoke  apparently  with 
the  amiable  design  of  directing  the  conversation  into 
a  less  painful  channel. 

Rowland,  from  where  he  stood,  could  see  the 
flower  she  meant  —  a  delicate  plant  of  radiant  hue, 

263 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

which  sprouted  from  the  top  of  an  immense  frag 
ment  of  wall  some  twenty  feet  from  their  place. 

Roderick  turned  his  head  and  looked  at  it  with 
out  answering.  At  last  glancing  round,  "Put  up 
your  veil!  "  he  said;  and  then  on  the  girl's  comply 
ing:  "Does  it  look  as  blue  now?" 

"Ah,  what  a  lovely  colour!"  she  murmured  as  she 
leaned  her  head  to  one  side. 

"Should  you  like  to  have  it?" 

She  stared  a  moment,  then  laughed  as  if  in  spite 
of  herself. 

"Should  you  like  to  have  it?"  he  repeated  in  a 
ringing  voice. 

"  Don't  look  as  if  you  would  eat  me  up',"  she  an 
swered.  "Do  you  suppose  I  want  you  to  get  it  for 
me  ?" 

Roderick  rose  to  his  feet  and  stood  looking  at 
the  little  flower.  It  was  separated  from  the  ledge 
on  which  he  stood  by  a  rugged  surface  of  vertical 
wall  which  dropped  straight  into  the  dusky  vaults 
behind  the  arena.  Suddenly  he  took  off  his  hat  and 
flung  it  behind  him.  Christina  then  sprang  to  her 
feet. 

"I  '11  get  it  for  you,"  he  said. 

She  seized  his  arm.  "  Are  you  crazy  ?  Do  you 
mean  to  kill  yourself?" 

"I  shall  not  kill  myself.    Sit  down!" 

"Pardon  me.  Not  till  you  do!"  And  she  grasped 
his  arm  with  both  hands. 

Roderick  shook  her  off  and  pointed  with  a  violent 
gesture  to  her  former  place.  "Go  there!"  he  harshly 
cried. 

264 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"You  can  never,  never!"  she  pleaded  with  clasped 
hands.  "I  do  entreat  you." 

Roderick  turned  and  looked  at  her,  and  then  in 
a  voice  which  Rowland  had  never  heard  him  use,  a 
voice  which  roused  the  echoes  of  the  mighty  ruin, 
"Sit  down!"  he  thundered.  She  hesitated  a  moment, 
after  which  she  sank  to  the  ground  and  buried  her 
face  in  her  hands. 

Rowland  had  seen  all  this  and  he  saw  what  fol 
lowed.  He  saw  Roderick  clasp  in  his  left  arm  the 
jagged  corner  of  the  vertical  partition  on  which  he 
proposed  to  try  his  experiment,  then  stretch  out  his 
leg  and  feel  for  a  resting-place  for  his  foot.  Rowland 
had  measured  with  a  hard  stare  and  a  dry  throat 
the  possibility  of  his  holding  on,  and  pronounced  it 
uncommonly  small.  The  wall  was  garnished  with  a 
series  of  narrow  projections,  the  remains  apparently 
of  a  brick  cornice  supporting  the  arch  of  a  vault  which 
had  long  since  collapsed.  It  was  by  lodging  his  toes 
on  these  loose  brackets,  and  grasping  with  his  hands 
at  certain  mouldering  protuberances  on  a  level  with 
his  head,  that  Roderick  intended  to  proceed.  The 
relics  of  the  cornice  were  utterly  worthless  as  a  sup 
port.  Rowland's  sharpened  sense  had  made  sure  of 
this,  and  yet  for  a  moment  he  had  hesitated.  If  the 
thing  were  possible  he  felt  a  sudden  high  bold  relish 
of  his  friend's  attempting  it.  It  would  be  finely  done, 
it  would  be  gallant,  it  would  have  a  sort  of  ardent 
authority  as  an  answer  to  Christina's  sinister  persi 
flage.  But  it  was  not  possible!  Rowland  left  his  place 
with  a  bound  and  scrambled  down  a  near  flight 
of  steps,  and  the  next  moment  a  stronger  pair  of 

265 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

hands  than  Christina's  were  laid  upon  Roderick's 
shoulders. 

He  turned,  staring,  pale  and  angry.  Christina 
rose,  pale  and  staring  too,  but  beautiful  in  her  wonder 
and  alarm.  "My  dear  young  idiot,"  said  Rowland, 
"  I  'm  only  preventing  you  from  doing  a  very  foolish 
thing.  That 's  an  exploit  for  spiders,  not  for  young 
sculptors  of  promise." 

Roderick  wiped  his  forehead,  looked  back  at  the 
wall;  he  closed  his  eyes  as  if  with  a  rush  of  retarded 
dizziness.  "  I  won't  resist  you,"  he  said.  "  But  I  've 
made  you  do  as  I  told  you,"  he  added,  turning  to 
Christina.  "Am  I  weak  now?" 

She  had  recovered  her  composure;  she  looked 
straight  past  him  and  addressed  Rowland.  "Be  so 
good  as  to  show  me  the  way  out  of  this  horrible  place!" 

He  helped  her  back  into  the  corridor;  Roderick 
followed  after  a  short  interval.  Of  course,  as  they 
were  descending  the  steps,  came  questions  for  Row 
land  to  meet,  also  more  or  less  surprise.  Where  had 
he  come  from  ?  how  happened  he  to  have  appeared 
just  at  that  moment  ?  Rowland  answered  that  he 
had  been  rambling  overhead  and  that,  looking  out  of 
an  aperture,  he  had  seen  a  gentleman  preparing  to 
undertake  a  preposterous  gymnastic  feat  and  a  lady 
swooning  away  in  consequence.  Interference  seemed 
in  order,  and  he  had  made  it  as  prompt  as  possible. 
Roderick  was  far  from  hanging  his  head  as  might 
become  a  man  who  had  been  caught  in  the  perpetra 
tion  of  an  extravagant  folly;  but  if  he  held  it  more 
erect  than  usual  our  friend  believed  that  this  was 
much  less  because  he  had  made  a  show  of  personal 

266 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

daring  than  because  he  had  triumphantly  proved  to 
Christina  that,  like  a  certain  person  she  had  dreamed 
of,  he  too  could  speak  the  language  of  decision. 
Christina  descended  to  the  arena  in  silence,  appar 
ently  occupied  with  her  own  thoughts.  She  betrayed 
no  sense  that  the  sequestered  nature  of  her  interview 
with  Roderick  might  have  invited  an  explanation; 
she  appeared  tacitly  to  assume  that  Rowland  would 
have  seen  stranger  things  in  New  York.  The  only 
evidence  of  her  recent  agitation  was  that  on  being 
joined  by  her  maid  she  declared  that  she  was  unable  to 
walk  home  —  she  must  have  a  carriage.  A  fiacre  was 
found  resting  in  the  shadow  of  the  Arch  of  Constan- 
tine,  and  Rowland  suspected  that  after  she  had  got 
into  it  she  disburdened  herself  under  her  veil  of  a  few 
natural  tears. 

Rowland  had  played  eavesdropper  to  so  good  a 
purpose  that  he  might  justly  have  omitted  the  cere 
mony  of  denouncing  himself  to  Roderick.  He  pre 
ferred,  however,  to  let  him  know  that  he  had  over 
heard  a  portion  of  his  talk  with  Christina. 

"Of  course  it  seems  to  you,"  Roderick  said,  "a 
proof  that  I  'm  hopelessly  infatuated." 

"  Your  companion  seemed  to  me  to  know  very  well 
how  to  handle  you,"  Rowland  returned.  "She  was 
twisting  you  round  her  finger.  I  don't  think  she 
exactly  meant  to  defy  you;  but  your  preposterous 
attempt  to  pluck  the  flower  was  a  proof  that  she  could 
go  all  lengths  in  the  way  of  making  a  fool  of  you." 

"Yes,"  said  Roderick  meditatively;  "she's  quite 
wiping  her  feet  on  me." 

"And  what  do  you  expect  to  come  of  it  ?" 
267 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Not  a  thousand  a  year."  And  Roderick  put  his 
hands  into  his  pockets  and  looked  as  if  he  were 
considering  the  most  colourless  fact  in  the  world. 

"And  in  the  light  of  your  late  interview,  what  do 
you  make  of  your  young  lady  ?" 

"If  I  could  tell  you  that,  it  would  be  plain  sailing. 
But  she  '11  not  tell  me  again  that  I  'm  a  muff." 

"Are  you  very  sure  you  're  much  stronger  than  she 
was  willing  to  allow  ?" 

"  I  may  be  as  weak  as  a  cat,  but  she  shall  never  dare 
—  she  shall  never  care  —  to  say  it!" 

Rowland  said  no  more  until  they  reached  the  Corso, 
when  he  asked  his  companion  whether  he  were  going 
to  his  studio. 

Roderick  started  out  of  an  absence  and  passed  his 
hands  over  his  eyes.  "Oh  no,  I  can't  settle  down  to 
work  after  such  a  scene  as  that.  I  was  not  afraid  of 
breaking  my  neck  then,  but  I  feel  in  a  devil  of  a  shake 
now.  I'll  go — I'll  go  and  sit  in  the  sun  on  the 
Pincio!" 

"Promise  me  this  first,"  said  his  companion  very 
solemnly,  "that  the  next  time  you  meet  Miss  Light  it 
shall  be  on  the  earth  and  not  in  the  air!" 

Since  his  return  from  Frascati  Roderick  had  been 
working  doggedly  at  the  statue  ordered  by  Mr. 
Leavenworth.  To  Rowland's  eye  he  had  made  a  very 
fair  beginning,  but  he  had  himself  insisted  from  the 
first  that  he  liked  neither  his  subject  nor  his  patron, 
and  that  it  was  impossible  to  feel  any  warmth  of  inter 
est  in  a  work  on  which  the  baleful  shadow  of  Mr. 
Leavenworth  was  to  rest.  It  was  all  against  the  grain; 
he  wrought  without  love.  Nevertheless  after  a  fashion 

268 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  wrought,  and  the  figure  grew  beneath  his  hands. 
Miss  Blanchard's  friend  was  ordering  works  of  art 
on  every  side,  and  his  purveyors  were  in  many  cases 
persons  with  whom  Roderick  declared  it  was  an 
infamy  to  be  associated.  There  had  been  famous 
tailors,  he  said,  who  declined  to  make  you  a  coat 
unless  you  should  get  the  hat  you  were  to  wear  with  it 
from  an  artist  of  their  own  choosing,  and  it  struck 
him  that  he  had  an  equal  right  to  exact  that  his 
statue  should  not  form  part  of  the  same  system  of 
ornament  as  the  "  Pearl  of  Perugia,"  a  picture  by  an 
American  aspirant  who  had,  in  Mr.  Leavenworth's 
opinion,  an  eye  for  colour  scarcely  matched  since 
Titian.  As  a  liberal  customer,  Mr.  Leavenworth 
used  to  drop  into  Roderick's  studio  to  see  how  things 
were  getting  on  and  give  a  friendly  hint  or  exert  an 
enlightened  control.  He  would  seat  himself  squarely, 
plant  his  gold-topped  cane  between  his  legs,  which  he 
held  very  much  apart,  rest  his  large  white  hands  on 
the  head,  and  enunciate  the  principles  of  spiritual 
art  —  a  species  of  fluid  wisdom  which  appeared  to 
rise  in  bucketfuls,  as  he  turned  the  crank,  from  the 
well-like  depths  of  his  moral  consciousness.  His 
benignant  and  imperturbable  pomposity  gave  Roder 
ick  the  sense  of  suffocating  beneath  an  immense 
feather-bed,  and  the  worst  of  the  matter  was  that  the 
good  gentleman's  placid  vanity  had  a  surface  from 
which  the  satiric  shaft  rebounded.  Roderick  admit 
ted  that  in  thinking  over  the  tribulations  of  struggling 
genius  the  danger  of  dying  of  too  much  attention  had 
never  occurred  to  him. 

The  deterrent  effect  of  the  episode  of  the  Coliseum 
269 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  apparently  of  long  continuance:  if  Roderick's 
nerves  had  been  shaken  his  hand  needed  time  to 
recover  its  steadiness.  He  cultivated  composure  upon 
principles  of  his  own;  by  frequenting  entertainments 
from  which  he  returned  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
and  lapsing  into  habits  which  might  fairly  be  called 
irregular.  He  had  hitherto  made  few  friends  among 
the  artistic  fraternity;  chiefly  because  he  had  taken 
no  trouble  about  it  and  because,  further,  there  was  in 
his  demeanour  an  elastic  independence  of  the  favour 
of  his  fellow-mortals  which  made  social  advances  on 
his  own  part  peculiarly  necessary.  Rowland  had  told 
him  —  on  grounds  that  worthy  might  have  been  at 
a  loss  to  defend  —  that  he  ought  to  fraternise  a  trifle 
more  with  his  colleagues,  and  he  had  always  an 
swered  that  he  had  not  the  smallest  objection  to 
fraternising;  let  his  colleagues  arrive!  They  arrived 
on  rare  occasions,  and  Roderick  was  not  punctilious 
about  returning  their  visits.  He  declared  there  was 
not  one  of  them  the  fruits  of  whose  genius  gave  him 
the  least  desire  to  delve  in  the  parent  soil.  For 
Gloriani  he  professed  a  consistent  contempt,  and 
having  been  once  to  look  at  his  wares  never  crossed 
his  threshold  again.  The  only  one  of  the  fraternity 
for  whom  by  his  own  admission  he  cared  a  straw 
was  small  Singleton;  but  he  took  the  more  diverted 
view  of  this  humble  genius  whenever  he  encountered 
him,  and  quite  forgot  his  existence  in  the  intervals. 
He  had  never  been  to  see  him,  but  Singleton  edged 
his  way  from  time  to  time  timidly  into  Roderick's 
studio,  and  opined  with  characteristic  modesty  that 
brilliant  fellows  like  Hudson  might  consent  to  receive 

270 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

homage  but  could  hardly  be  expected  to  render  it. 
Roderick  never  acknowledged  applause,  and  appar 
ently  failed  to  follow  with  any  curiosity  the  footsteps 
of  appreciation.  And  then  his  taste  as  to  company 
was  never  to  be  foretold.  There  were  very  good 
fellows  who  were  disposed  to  cultivate  him,  but  who 
bored  him  to  crying  out,  and  there  were  others 
beyond  even  the  wide  bounds  of  Rowland's  char 
ity  with  whom  he  appeared  to  delight  to  rattle.  He 
gave  the  most  fantastic  reasons  for  his  likes  and 
dislikes.  He  would  declare  he  thirsted  for  the  blood 
of  a  man  with  a  flat  nose,  and  he  would  explain  his 
unaccountable  fancy  for  some  competitor  wholly 
featureless  by  telling  you  that  he  had  an  ancestor  who 
in  the  thirteenth  century  had  walled  up  his  wife  alive. 
"  I  like  to  talk  to  a  man  whose  ancestor  has  walled  up 
his  wife  alive,"  he  would  say.  "  You  may  not  see  the 
charm  of  it,  and  think  my  poor  gentleman  a  dull  dog. 
It 's  very  possible;  I  don't  ask  you  to  admire  him. 
But  he  appeals  to  me  —  I  mean  that  fact  about  him 
does:  it  sets  him  off.  The  old  fellow,  the  rude  fore 
father,  left  her  for  three  days  with  her  face  exposed, 
and  placed  a  looking-glass  opposite  to  her,  so  that  she 
could  see,  as  he  said,  if  her  gown  was  a  fit!" 

His  accessibility  to  odd  association  had  led  him 
to  acquaintance  with  a  number  of  people  outside 
of  Rowland's  well-ordered  circle,  and  he  made  no 
secret  of  their  being  very  queer  fish.  He  formed 
an  intimacy,  among  several,  with  a  strange  char 
acter  who  had  come  to  Rome  as  an  emissary  of  one 
of  the  Central  American  republics,  to  drive  some 
ecclesiastical  bargain  with  the  papal  government. 

271 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  Pope  had  given  him  the  cold  shoulder,  but  since 
he  had  not  prospered  as  a  diplomatist  he  had  sought 
compensation  as  a  man  of  the  world,  and  his  great 
flamboyant  curricle  and  negro  lackeys  were  for 
several  weeks  one  of  the  striking  ornaments  of  the 
Pincian.  He  spoke  a  queer  jargon  of  Italian,  Span 
ish,  French,  English,  American,  humorously  relieved 
with  scraps  of  ecclesiastical  Latin,  and  to  those 
who  enquired  of  Roderick  what  he  found  to  inter 
est  him  in  so  "dreadful"  a  type,  the  latter  would 
reply,  looking  at  his  interlocutor  with  his  lucid  blue 
eyes,  that  he  had  a  beautiful  freedom  of  mind.  The 
two  had  gone  together  one  night  to  a  ball  given  by 
a  lady  of  some  renown  in  the  Spanish  colony,  and 
very  late,  on  his  way  home,  Roderick  came  up  to 
Rowland's  rooms,  in  the  windows  of  which  he  had 
seen  a  light.  Rowland  was  going  to  bed,  but  Rod 
erick  flung  himself  into  an  arm-chair  and  chattered 
for  an  hour.  The  friends  of  the  tropical  envoy  were 
as  amusing  as  himself,  and  very  much  in  the  same 
line.  The  mistress  of  the  house  had  worn  a  yellow 
satin  dress  and  gold  heels  to  her  slippers,  and  at  the 
close  of  the  entertainment  had  sent  for  a  pair  of  cas 
tanets,  tucked  up  her  petticoats  and  danced  a  fan 
dango,  while  the  gentlemen  sat  cross-legged  on  the 
floor.  "It  was  awfully  low,"  Roderick  said;  "all 
of  a  sudden  I  perceived  it  and  bolted.  Nothing  of 
that  kind  ever  amuses  me  to  the  end;  before  it's 
^half  over  it  bores  me  to  death;  it  makes  me  sick. 
Hang  it,  why  can't  a  poor  fellow  enjoy  things  in 
peace?  My  illusions  are  all  broken-winded;  they 
won't  carry  me  twenty  paces.  I  can't  laugh  and  for- 

272 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

get;  my  laugh  dies  away  before  it  begins.  Your 
friend  Stendhal  writes  on  his  book-covers  (I  never 
got  further)  that  he  has  seen  too  early  in  life  la  beaute 
parfaite.  I  don't  know  how  early  he  saw  it;  I  saw 
it  before  I  was  born  —  in  another  state  of  being. 
I  can't  describe  it  positively;  I  can  only  say  I  don't 
find  it  anywhere  now.  Not  at  the  bottom  of  cham 
pagne  glasses;  not,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  in  that 
extra  half-yard  or  so  of  shoulder  that  some  women 
have  their  ball-dresses  cut  to  expose.  I  don't  find  it 
at  noisy  supper-tables  where  half  a  dozen  ugly  men 
with  pomatumed  heads  are  rapidly  growing  uglier 
still  with  heat  and  wine;  nor  when  I  come  away 
and  walk  through  these  squalid  black  streets  and 
go  out  into  the  Forum  and  see  a  few  old  battered 
stone  posts  standing  there  like  gnawed  bones  stuck 
into  the  earth.  Everything  's  mean  and  dusky  and 
shabby,  and  the  men  and  women  who  make  up 
this  so-called  brilliant  society  are  the  meanest  and 
shabbiest  of  all.  They  have  no  real  spontaneity; 
they  are  nothing  but  parrots  and  popinjays.  They 
have  no  more  dignity  than  so  many  grasshoppers. 
Nothing  is  good  but  one!"  And  he  jumped  up  and 
stood  looking  at  one  of  his  wrought  figures,  which 
shone  vaguely  across  the  room  in  the  dim  lamp 
light. 

"Yes,  do  tell  us,"  said  Rowland,  "what  to  hold 
on  by!" 

"  Those  things  of  mine  were  pretty  devilish  good," 
he  answered.  "  But  my  idea  was  so  much  better  — 
and  that 's  what  I  mean!" 

Rowland  said  nothing.     He  was  willing  to  wait 

273 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  Roderick  to  complete  the  circle  of  his  metamor 
phoses,  but  he  had  no  desire  to  officiate  as  chorus 
to  the  play. 

"You  think  I  've  the  *  cheek'  of  the  devil  himself," 
the  latter  said  at  last,  "coming  up  to  moralise  at 
this  hour  of  the  night!  You  think  I  want  to  throw 
dust  into  your  eyes,  to  put  you  off  the  scent.  That 's 
your  eminently  rational  view  of  the  case." 

"Pardon  my  not  taking  any  view  at  all,"  said 
Rowland. 

"You  Ve  given  me  up  then  ?" 

"No,  I  've  merely  suspended  judgement.  I  'm 
waiting." 

Roderick  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "What  are 
you  waiting  for  ?  " 

Rowland  made  an  angry  gesture.  "Oh  miserable, 
oh  merciless  youth !  When  you  've  hit  your  mark 
and  made  people  care  for  you,  you  should  n't  twist 
your  weapon  about  at  that  rate  in  their  vitals.  Allow 
me  to  say  I  'm  sleepy.  Good-night!" 


XIV 

IT  happened  some  days  later  that,  on  a  long  after 
noon  ramble,  Rowland  took  his  way  through  one 
of  the  quiet  corners  of  the  Trastevere.  He  was  par 
ticularly  fond  of  this  part  of  Rome,  though  he  could 
hardly  have  expressed  the  sinister  charm  of  it.  As 
you  pass  away  from  the  dusky  swarming  purlieus 
of  the  Ghetto  you  emerge  into  a  region  of  empty, 
soundless,  grass-grown  lanes  and  alleys,  where  the 
shabby  houses  seem  mouldering  away  in  disuse  and 
yet  your  footstep  brings  figures  of  startling  Roman 
type  to  the  doorways.  There  are  few  monuments 
here,  but  no  part  of  Rome  seemed  more  oppress 
ively  historic,  more  weighted  with  a  ponderous 
past,  more  blighted  with  the  melancholy  of  things 
that  had  had  their  day.  When  the  yellow  afternoon 
sunshine  slept  on  the  sallow  battered  walls  and 
lengthened  the  shadows  in  the  grassy  courtyards  of 
small  closed  churches  the  place  acquired  a  strange 
fascination.  The  church  of  Saint  Cecilia  has  one  of 
these  sunny  waste-looking  courts;  the  edifice  seems 
abandoned  to  silence  and  the  charity  of  chance  de 
votion.  Rowland  never  passed  it  without  going  in, 
and  he  was  generally  the  only  visitor.  He  entered 
it  now,  but  he  found  that  two  persons  had  preceded 
him,  both  of  whom  were  women.  One  was  at  her 

275 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

prayers  at  one  of  the  side-altars;  the  other  was 
seated  against  a  column  at  the  upper  end  of  the  nave. 
Rowland  walked  to  the  altar  and  paid  in  a  moment 
ary  glance  at  the  clever  statue  of  the  saint  in  death 
in  the  niche  beneath  it  the  usual  tribute  to  the  charm 
of  polished  ingenuity.  As  he  turned  away  he  looked 
at  the  person  seated  and  recognised  Christina  Light. 
Seeing  that  she  perceived  him  he  advanced  to  speak 
to  her. 

She  was  sitting  in  a  listless  manner,  her  hands 
in  her  lap;  her  attitude  spoke  of  weariness,  and  her 
walking-dress,  in  its  simplicity,  of  the  desire  to 
escape  observation.  When  he  had  greeted  her  he 
glanced  back  at  her  companion  and  recognised  the 
faithful  Assunta. 

Christina  found  a  smile  to  note  this  movement. 
"Are  you  looking  round  for  Mr.  Hudson?  He's 
not  here,  I  'm  happy  to  say." 

"  If  he  were  here  one  might  understand,"  said  Row 
land.  "This  is  a  strange  place  to  meet  you  alone." 

"It's  just  the  place  to  meet  me.  People  call  me 
a  strange  girl,  and  I  might  as  well  have  the  comfort 
of  it.  I  came  to  take  a  walk;  that,  by  the  way,  is 
part  of  my  strangeness.  I  can't  loll  all  the  morning 
on  a  sofa  and  sit  perched  all  the  afternoon  in  a  car 
riage.  I  get  horribly  restless;  I  must  move;  I  must 
do  something  and  see  something.  Mamma  suggests 
a  cup  of  tea.  Meanwhile  I  put  on  an  old  dress  and 
half  a  dozen  veils,  I  take  Assunta  under  my  arm 
and  we  start  on  a  pedestrian  tour.  It 's  a  bore  that 
I  can't  take  the  poodle,  but  he  attracts  attention. 
We  trudge  about  everywhere;  there 's  nothing  I 

276 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

like  so  much.     I  hope  you  congratulate  me  on  the 
simplicity  of  my  tastes." 

"I  congratulate  you  on  your  great  sense.  To  live 
in  Rome  and  not  to  walk  about  would,  I  think,  be 
poor  pleasure.  But  you  're  terribly  far  from  home, 
and  I  'm  afraid  you  're  rather  tired." 

"A  little  —  enough  to  sit  here  a  while." 

"Might  I  offer  you  my  company  while  you  rest  ?" 

"If  you  '11  promise  to  amuse  me.  I  'm  in  dismal 
spirits." 

Saying  he  would  do  what  he  could,  Rowland 
brought  a  chair  and  placed  it  near  her.  He  was  not 
in  love  with  her;  he  disapproved  of  her;  he  dis 
trusted  her;  and  yet  he  felt  it  a  rare  and  expensive 
privilege  to  watch  her,  and  he  found  her  presence 
in  every  way  important  and  momentous.  The  back 
ground  of  her  nature  had  a  sort  of  landscape  large 
ness  and  was  mysterious  withal,  emitting  strange, 
fantastic  gleams  and  flashes.  Waiting  for  these  was 
better  sport  than  some  kinds  of  fishing.  Moreover 
it  was  not  a  disadvantage  to  talk  with  a  girl  who 
forced  one  to  make  sure  of  the  sufficiency  of  one's 
wit;  it  was  like  having  in  one's  bank-book  after 
"wild  "drafts:  it  settled  the  question  of  one's  balance. 

Assunta  had  risen  from  her  prayers  and,  as  he 
took  his  place,  was  coming  back  to  her  mistress. 
But  Christina  motioned  her  away.  "No,  no;  while 
you  're  about  it  say  a  few  dozen  more!  Pray  for  me" 
she  added  in  English.  "  Pray  that  I  say  nothing  silly. 
She  has  been  at  it  half  an  hour;  I  envy  her  volubility!" 

"One  envies  good  Catholics  many  things,"  said 
Rowland  with  conscious  breadth. 

277 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  speak  to  me  of  that!  I  've  been  through  that 
too,  though  I  'm  not  so  much  a  good  Catholic  as  a  bad 
one.  Mamma's  what  I  call  a  good  one  —  ecco! 
There  was  a  time  when  I  wanted  immensely  to  be  a 
nun;  it  was  not  a  laughing  matter.  It  was  when  I  was 
about  sixteen  years  old.  I  read  the  *  Imitation '  and 
the  Life  of  Saint  Catherine;  I  fully  believed  in  the 
miracles  of  the  saints  and  I  was  dying  to  have  one  of 
my  own  —  little  of  a  saint  as  I  was !  The  least  little 
accident  that  could  have  been  twisted  into  a  mir 
acle  would  have  carried  me  straight  into  the  cloister. 
I  had  for  three  months  —  positively  —  the  perfect 
vocation.  It  passed  away,  and  as  I  sat  here  just  now 
I  was  wondering  what  has  become  of  it." 

Rowland  had  already  been  sensible  of  something 
in  this  young  lady's  tone  which  he  would  have  de 
scribed  as  an  easy  use  of  her  imagination,  and  this 
epitome  of  her  religious  experience  failed  to  strike  him 
as  an  authentic  text.  But  it  was  no  disfiguring  mask, 
since  she  herself  was  evidently  the  foremost  dupe  of 
her  inventions.  She  had  a  fictitious  history  in  which 
she  believed  much  more  fondly  than  in  her  real  one, 
and  an  infinite  capacity  for  extemporised  reminis 
cence  adapted  to  the  mood  of  the  hour.  She  liked  to 
carry  herself  further  and  further,  to  see  herself  in 
situation  and  action;  and  the  vivacity  and  sponta 
neity  of  her  character  gave  her  really  a  starting-point 
in  experience,  so  that  the  many-coloured  flowers  of 
fiction  that  blossomed  in  her  talk  were  perversions 
of  fact  only  if  one  could  n't  take  them  for  sincerities  of 
spirit.  And  Rowland  felt  that  whatever  she  said  of 
herself  might  have  been,  under  the  imagined  circum- 

278 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

stances;  energy  was  there,  audacity,  the  restless 
questioning  soul.  "I  'm  afraid  I  'm  sadly  prosaic," 
he  said,  "  for  in  these  many  months  now  that  I  Ve 
been  in  Rome  I  've  never  ceased  for  a  moment  to 
look  at  the  Faith  simply  from  the  outside.  I  don't  see 
an  opening  as  big  as  your  finger-nail  where  I  could 
creep  into  it!" 

"What  do  you  believe  ?"  asked  Christina,  looking 
at  him.  "Do  you  believe  anything  at  all  ?" 

"  I  'm  very  old-fashioned.  I  believe  in  the  grand 
old  English  Bible." 

"'English'  —  ?" 

"American  then,"  Rowland  smiled. 

She  let  her  beautiful  eyes  wander  a  while,  and 
then  gave  a  small  sigh.  "You're  much  to  be  en 
vied!" 

"Oh  'envied' — !"  And  Rowland  fairly  sounded 
bitter. 

"Yes,  you  have  rest." 

"You  're  too  young  to  envy  anybody  anything." 

"I'm  not  young;  I've  never  been  young!  My 
mother  took  care  of  that.  I  was  a  little  wrinkled  old 
woman  at  ten." 

"I  'm  afraid,"  said  Rowland  in  a  moment,  "that 
you  're  fond  of  overloading  the  picture." 

She  looked  at  him  a  while  in  silence.  "Do  you 
wish  to  win  my  eternal  gratitude  ?  Prove  to  me  that 
I  'm  better  than  I  suppose." 

"I  should  have  first  to  know  what  you  really 
suppose." 

She  shook  her  head.  "  It  would  n't  do !  You  would 
be  horrified  to  learn  even  the  things  I  imagine  about 

279 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

myself,  and  shocked  at  the  knowledge  of  evil  displayed 
in  my  very  mistakes." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Rowland,  "I'll  ask  no  ques 
tions.  But,  at  a  venture,  I  promise  you  to  catch  you 
some  day  in  the  act  of  doing  something  very  good." 

"Are  you  too  trying  to  flatter  me  ?  I  thought  you 
and  I  had  fallen  from  the  first  into  rather  a  truth- 
speaking  vein." 

"Oh,  I've  not  given  it  up,"  said  Rowland;  and 
he  determined,  since  he  had  the  credit  of  homely 
directness,  to  push  his  advantage  further.  The  oppor 
tunity  seemed  excellent.  But  while  he  was  hesitating 
how  to  begin,  his  companion  said,  bending  forward 
and  clasping  her  hands  in  her  lap:  "Please  tell  me 
about  your  faith." 

"My  faith—  ?" 

"The  faith  you  said  just  now  you  have." 

"Tell  you  about  it?"  Rowland  looked  cold. 
"Never  in  the  world!" 

She  flushed  a  little.  "  Is  it  such  a  mighty  mystery 
it  can't  be  put  into  words  or  communicated  to  my 
inferior  mind  ?" 

"Such  things  —  one's  way  of  meeting,  morally,  the 
mystery  of  the  universe  —  lie  very  deep  down,  at  the 
bottom  of  one's  trunk.  One  can't  always  put  one's 
hand  on  them  in  a  moment." 

"Then  of  what  use  are  they?"  Christina  asked; 
"  a  folded  squashed  garment  that  one  never  wears  ? 
Deep  convictions,  it  seems  to  me,"  she  said,  "  should 
be  eloquent  and  aggressive.  They  should  wish  to  make 
converts,  to  persuade  and  illumine,  to  take  possession ! " 

"  Is  n't  it  true,  rather,  that  the  deeper  they  are  the 
280 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

more  they  take  the  colour  of  one's  general  disposition  ? 
I  'm  not  aggressive,  and  certainly  I  'm  not  eloquent." 

"Well,  I  'm  sure  I  should  n't  greatly  care  for  any 
thing  you  might  say,"  Christina  rejoined.  "  It  would 
certainly,  after  all,  be  half-hearted.  You  're  not  in 
the  least  satisfied." 

"How  do  you  know  that  ?" 

"Oh,  I'm  an  observer!" 

"No  one  's  satisfied  with  everything,  I  suppose  — 
but  I  assure  you  I  complain  of  nothing." 

"So  much  the  worse  for  your  honesty.  To  begin 
with,  you  're  in  love." 

"You  would  n't  have  me  complain  of  that!" 

"And  it  doesn't  go  well.  There  are  grievous 
obstacles.  So  much  I  know.  You  need  n't  protest; 
I  ask  no  questions.  You  '11  tell  no  one  —  me  least 
of  all.  Why  does  one  never  see  you  ?" 

"Why,  if  I  come  to  see  you,"  said  Rowland,  de 
liberating,  "it  wouldn't  be,  it  couldn't  be,  for  a 
trivial  reason  —  because  I  had  not  been  for  a  month, 
because  I  was  passing,  because  I  admire  you.  It 
would  be  because  I  should  have  something  very  par 
ticular  to  say.  I  have  n't  come  because  I  Ve  been 
slow  in  making  up  my  mind  to  say  it." 

"You  're  simply  cruel  then,"  the  girl  declared. 
"  Something  particular,  in  this  ocean  of  inanities  ? 
In  common  charity,  speak!" 

"  I  doubt  whether  you  '11  like  it." 

"Oh,  I  hope  to  goodness  it 's  not  some  tribute  to 
my  charms!"  Christina  wailed. 

"It  may  be  called  a  tribute  to  your  reasonable 
ness.  That 's  one  of  your  charms,  you  know.  You 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

perhaps  remember  that  I  gave  you  a  hint  of  it  the 
other  day  at  Frascati." 

"Has  it  been  hanging  fire  all  this  time?  Then 
let  it  off — no  matter  with  what  bang.  I  promise 
not  to  stop  my  ears/' 

"It  relates  to  my  friend  Hudson."  And  Row 
land  paused.  She  was  looking  at  him  expectantly; 
her  face  gave  no  other  sign.  "  I  'm  rather  disturbed 
in  mind  about  him.  He  seems  to  me  at  times  not 
quite  to  have  found  his  feet."  He  paused  again,  but 
Christina  said  nothing.  "The  case  is  simply  this," 
he  went  on.  "It  was  by  my  advice,  you  see,  that  he 
gave  up  his  work  at  home  and  went  in  for  the  artist's, 
went  in  for  this,  life.  I  made  him  burn  his  ships,  I 
brought  him  to  Rome,  I  launched  him  in  the  world, 
and  I  've  undertaken  to  answer  to  —  to  his  mother 
for  his  doing  well.  It 's  not  such  smooth  sailing  as 
it  might  be,  and  I  'm  inclined  to  put  up  prayers  for 
fair  winds.  If  he  's  to  succeed  he  must  work  — 
very  quietly  and  very  hard.  It 's  not  news  to  you, 
I  imagine,  that  Hudson  's  a  great  admirer  of  yours." 

Christina  remained  silent;  she  turned  away  her 
eyes  with  an  air,  not  of  confusion,  but  of  deep  de 
liberation.  Violent  frankness  had,  as  a  general 
thing,  struck  Rowland  as  the  keynote  of  her  sys 
tem,  but  she  had  more  than  once  given  him  a  sug 
gestion  of  an  unfathomable  power  of  calculation, 
and  her  silence  now  had  for  him  vaguely  something 
charged  and  ominous.  He  had  of  course  rather 
sounded  his  scruples  before  deciding  to  make  to  an 
unprotected  girl,  for  the  needs  of  a  cause  —  and  not 
her  cause,  but  his  very  own  —  the  point  that  another 

282 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

man  was  in  a  state  about  her:  the  thing  too  much 
resembled,  superficially,  risking  the  disturbance 
of  her  peace.  But  he  was  clear  that  even  rigid  dis 
cretion  is  not  bound  to  take  such  a  person  at  more 
than  her  own  estimate,  and  Christina  presently  re 
assured  him  as  to  the  limits  of  her  susceptibility. 
"Mr.  Hudson's  mad  about  me,"  she  simply  said. 

Rowland  flinched  a  trifle.  Then,  "Am  I,"  he 
asked,  "from  this  point  of  view  of  mine,  to  be  glad 
or  sorry  ? " 

"I  don't  understand  you." 

"Why,  is  Hudson  to  be  happy  or  unhappy?" 

She  hesitated  a  moment.  "You  wish  him  to  be 
great  in  his  profession  ?  And  for  that  you  consider 
that  he  must  be  happy  in  his  life?" 

"Decidedly.  I  don't  say  it's  a  general  rule,  but 
I  think  it 's  a  rule  for  him." 

"So  that  if  he  were  very  happy  he  would  become 
very  great  ?" 

"  He  would  at  least  do  himself  justice." 

"And  by  that  you  mean  a  great  deal  ?" 

"A  great  deal." 

Christina  sank  back  in  her  chair  and  rested  her 
eyes  on  the  cracked  and  polished  slabs  of  the  pave 
ment.  At  last  she  looked  up.  "You  've  not  forgotten, 
I  suppose,  that  you  told  me  he  was  engaged  to  be 
married  ?" 

"By  no  means." 

"He  's  still  engaged  then  ?" 

"To  the  best  of  my  belief." 

"And  yet  you  desire  that,  as  you  say,  he  should 
be  made  happy  by  something  I  can  do  for  him  ?  " 

283 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"What  I  desire  is  this  —  that  your  great  influ 
ence  with  him  should  be  exerted  for  his  good,  that 
it  should  help  him  and  not  retard  him.  Understand 
me  well.  You  probably  know  that  your  admirers, 
your  victims,  have  rather  a  hapless  time  of  it.  I  can 
answer  for  two  of  them.  You  don't  know  your  own 
mind  very  well,  I  imagine,  and  as  you  like  being 
admired  the  poor  devil  on  whom  you  have  cast 
your  spell  has  to  pay  all  the  expenses.  Since  we  're 
really  being  frank  I  wonder  whether  I  might  n't  say 
the  great  word." 

"You  need  n't;  I  know  it.    I'm  a  beastly  low  flirt." 

"No,  not  a  'low'  one,  rather  a  high  one,  since  I  'm 
making  an  appeal  to  your  intelligence  and  your 
generosity.  I  'm  pretty  sure  you  can't  imagine 
yourself  marrying  my  friend." 

"There's  nothing  I  can't  imagine.  That's  my 
difficulty." 

Rowland's  brow  contracted  impatiently.  "7  can't 
imagine  it  then!" 

Christina  flushed  faintly;  then  very  gently,  "I'm 
not  so  bad  as  you  think,"  she  said. 

"It 's  not  a  question  of  badness;  it 's  a  question  of 
whether  the  conditions  don't  make  the  thing  an 
extreme  improbability." 

"Worse  and  worse.  I  can  be  bullied  then  —  or 
bribed  ?" 

"You  're  not  so  candid  as  you  pretend  to  be.  My 
feeling  's  simply  this,"  Rowland  went  on.  "Hudson, 
as  I  understand  him,  does  n't  need,  as  an  artist,  the 
stimulus  of  strong  emotion,  of  precarious  passion. 
He  's  better  without  it;  he  's  emotional  and  passion- 

284 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ate  and  precarious  enough  when  left  to  himself.  The 
sooner  passion  's  at  rest  therefore  the  sooner  he  '11 
settle  down  to  work,  and  the  fewer  emotions  he  has 
that  are  mere  emotions  and  nothing  more  the  better 
for  him.  If  you  cared  for  him  enough  to  marry  him  I 
should  have  nothing  to  say;  I  should  never  venture  to 
interfere.  But  I  greatly  guess  you  don't,  and  there 
fore  I  suggest  most  respectfully  that  you  leave  him 
alone." 

"  If  I  leave  him  alone  he  '11  go  on  like  a  new  clock, 
eh  ?" 

"  He  '11  do  better.  He  '11  have  no  excuses,  no 
pretexts." 

"Oh,  he  makes  me  a  pretext,  does  he  ?  I  'm  much 
obliged!"  cried  Christina  with  a  laugh.  "What 's  he 
doing  now  ?" 

"I  can  hardly  say.  He's  like  a  very  old  clock  indeed. 
He  's  moody,  desultory,  idle,  irregular,  fantastic." 

"Heavens,  what  a  list!     And  it's  all  poor  me?" 

"No,  not  all.  But  you  're  a  part  of  it,  and  I  turn  to 
you  because  you  're  a  more  tangible,  sensible,  respon 
sible  cause  than  the  other  things." 

Christina  raised  her  hand  to  her  eyes  and  bent  her 
head  thoughtfully.  Rowland  was  puzzled  to  measure 
the  effect  of  his  venture;  she  rather  surprised  him  by 
her  mildness.  At  last,  without  moving,  "  If  I  were  to 
marry  him,"  she  asked,  "what  would  have  become  of 
his  fiancee  ?" 

"I  'm  bound  to  suppose  that  she  would  have  be 
come  extremely  unhappy." 

Christina  said  nothing  more,  and  Rowland,  to  let 
her  make  her  reflexions,  left  his  place  and  strolled 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

away.  Poor  Assunta,  sitting  patiently  on  a  stone 
bench  and  unprovided  on  this  occasion  with  military 
consolation,  gave  him  a  bright  frank  smile  which 
might  have  been  construed  as  an  expression  of  regret 
for  herself  and  of  intelligence  for  her  mistress.  Row 
land  presently  seated  himself  again  near  that  young 
woman. 

"What  do  you  think  of  your  friend's  infidelity  to 
that  person  in  the  little  place  ?"  she  asked  with  a 
sudden  look  at  him. 

"I  don't  like  it." 

"Was  he  very  much  in  love  with  her?" 

"  He  requested  the  favour  of  her  hand.  You  may 
judge." 

"Is  she  also  poor?" 

"  Yes,  she  's  also  poor." 

"Is  she  very  much  in  love  with  him?" 

"  I  know  her  too  little  to  say." 

She  paused  again  and  then  resumed.  "You've 
settled  in  your  mind  then  that  I  '11  never  seriously 
listen  to  him  ?" 

"I  shall  think  it  unlikely  until  the  contrary  's 
proved." 

"  How  shall  it  be  proved  ?  How  do  you  know  what 
passes  between  us  ?" 

"I  can  judge  of  course  only  from  appearances;  but, 
like  you,  I  am  an  observer.  Hudson  has  not  at  all  to 
me  the  air  of  the  lucky  lover." 

"  If  he  has  a  bad  air  there  's  a  good  reason.  His 
bad  air  's  his  bad  conscience.  One  must  hope  so  at 
least.  On  the  other  hand,  simply  as  a  friend,"  she 
continued  gently,  "you  think  I  can  do  him  no  good  ? " 

286 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  humility  of  her  tone,  combined  with  her  beauty 
as  she  made  this  remark,  was  inexpressibly  touching, 
and  Rowland  had  an  uncomfortable  sense  of  being 
put  at  a  disadvantage.  "There  are  doubtless  many 
good  things  you  might  do  if  you  had  proper  oppor 
tunity,"  he  said.  "But  you  seem  to  be  sailing  with  a 
current  which  leaves  you  little  leisure  for  quiet  bene 
volence.  You  live  in  the  whirl  and  hurry  of  a  world 
into  which  a  poor  artist  can  hardly  find  it  to  his  ad 
vantage  to  follow  you." 

"In  plain  English  I'm  odiously  frivolous.  You 
put  it  very  generously." 

"  I  won't  hesitate  to  say  all  my  thought,"  said  Row 
land.  "For  better  or  worse  you  seem  to  me  to  belong 
both  by  character  and  by  destiny  to  what  is  called 
the  world,  the  'great,'  the  dangerous,  the  delightful 
world.  You  're  made  to  ornament  it  magnificently  — 
you  're  made  to  charm  it  irresistibly.  You  're  not 
made  to  be  an  artist's  wife." 

"I  see.  But  even  from  your  point  of  view  that 
would  depend  upon  the  artist.  Extraordinary  talent 
might  take  him  into  the  wonderful  place  you  speak  of." 

Rowland  smiled.    "That's  very  true." 

"If,  as  it  is,"  Christina  continued  in  a  moment, 
"you  take  a  low  view  of  me  —  no,  you  need  n't  pro 
test!  —  I  wonder  what  you  would  think  if  you  knew 
certain  things." 

"What  things  do  you  mean  ?" 

"Well,  for  example,  how  I  was  brought  up.  I  've 
had  a  horrid  vulgar  life.  There  must  be  some  good 
in  me,  since  I  've  perceived  it,  since  I  've  turned  and 
judged  my  circumstances." 

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RODERICK  HUDSON 

"My  dear  Miss  Light!"  Rowland  murmured  re- 
monstrantly. 

She  gave  an  almost  harsh  little  laugh.  "You  don't 
want  to  hear!  you  don't  want  to  have  to  think  about 
that!" 

"  Have  I  a  right  to  ?  You  need  n't  justify  yourself." 

She  turned  upon  him  a  moment  the  quickened 
light  of  her  beautiful  eyes,  then  fell  to  musing  again. 
"Is  there  not  some  novel  or  some  play,"  she  asked  at 
last,  "in  which  a  beautiful  wicked  woman  who  has 
ensnared  a  young  man  sees  his  father  come  to  her  and 
beg  her  to  let  him  go  ?" 

"I  seem  to  remember  many  —  and  that  the  wicked 
woman  generally  weeps  and  makes  the  sacrifice." 

"Well,  I  '11  try  at  least  to  weep.  But  tell  me,"  she 
continued,  "shall  you  consider  —  admitting  your 
proposition  —  that  in  ceasing  to  be  nice  to  Mr.  Hud 
son,  so  that  he  may  go  about  his  business,  I  do 
something  magnanimous,  heroic,  sublime,  something 
with  a  fine  name  like  that?" 

Rowland,  elated  with  the  prospect  of  gaining  his 
point,  was  about  to  reply  that  she  would  deserve  the 
finest  name  in  the  world;  but  he  instantly  suspected 
that  this  tone  would  n't  please  her.  Besides,  it 
would  n't  express  his  meaning.  "You  do  something 
I  shall  greatly  respect,"  he  contented  himself  with 
saying. 

She  made  no  answer  and  in  a  moment  she  beck 
oned  to  her  maid.  "What  have  I  to  do  to-day  ?"  she 
asked. 

Assunta  meditated.  "Eh,  it's  a  very  busy  day! 
Fortunately  I  've  a  better  memory  than  the  signor- 

288 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ina,"  she  said,  turning  to  Rowland.  She  began  to 
count  on  her  fingers,  "We  've  to  go  to  the  Pie  di 
Marmo  to  see  about  those  laces  that  were  sent  to  be 
washed.  You  said  also  that  you  wished  to  say  three 
sharp  words  to  the  Buonvicini  about  your  pink  dress. 
You  want  some  moss  rosebuds  for  to-night,  and  you 
won't  get  them  for  nothing!  You  dine  at  the  Austrian 
Embassy,  and  that  Frenchman  's  to  powder  your 
hair.  You  're  to  come  home  in  time  to  receive,  for 
the  signora  gives  a  dance.  And  so  away,  away  till 
morning!" 

"Ah,  yes,  the  moss  roses!"  —  Christina  rose  to 
this  vision.  "  I  must  have  a  great  lot  —  at  least  a 
hundred.  Nothing  but  buds,  eh  ?  You  must  sew 
them  in  a  kind  of  immense  apron  down  the  front  of 
my  dress.  Packed  tight  together,  eh  ?  It  will  be  de 
lightfully  barbarous.  And  then  twenty  more  or  so  for 
my  hair.  They  go  very  well  with  powder;  don't  you 
think  so  ?"  And  she  turned  to  Rowland.  "I'm  going 
en  Pompadour" 

"Going  where  ?" 

"To  the  Spanish  Embassy,  or  whatever  it  is." 

"All  down  the  front,  signorina  ?  Dio  buono!  You 
must  give  me  time!"  Assunta  cried. 

"Yes,  we'll  go!"  And  she  left  her  place.  She 
walked  slowly  to  the  door  of  the  church,  looking  at 
the  pavement,  and  Rowland  could  n't  have  guessed 
if  she  were  thinking  of  her  apron  of  moss  rosebuds 
or  of  her  opportunity  for  a  spiritual  flight.  Before 
reaching  the  door  she  turned  away  and  stood  gazing 
at  an  old  picture,  indistinguishable  with  blackness, 
over  an  altar.  At  last  they  passed  out  into  the  court. 

289 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Glancing  at  her  in  the  open  air  Rowland  was  startled; 
she  might  have  been  weeping  like  the  wicked  women 
of  the  plays.  They  had  lost  time,  she  said,  and  they 
must  hurry;  she  sent  Assunta  to  look  for  a  coach.  She 
remained  silent  a  while,  scratching  the  ground  with 
the  point  of  her  parasol,  and  then  at  last,  looking  up, 
she  thanked  Rowland  for  his  confidence  in  her 
"  reasonableness."  "  It 's  really  very  comfortable  to 
be  expected  to  do  something  good,  after  all  the  horrid 
things  one  has  been  used  to  doing  —  instructed, 
commanded,  coerced  to  do.  I  '11  think  over  what 
you  've  said  to  me."  In  that  deserted  quarter  coaches 
are  rare,  and  there  was  some  delay  in  Assunta's  pro 
curing  one.  Christina  talked  of  the  church,  of  the 
picturesque  old  court,  of  that  strange  decaying  corner 
of  Rome.  Rowland  was  perplexed;  he  was  ill  at  ease. 
At  last  the  cab  arrived,  but  she  waited  a  moment 
longer.  "  So,  decidedly,"  she  suddenly  asked,  "  I  can 
only  hurt  him  ?" 

"You  make  me  feel  very  brutal,"  said  Rowland. 

"And  he  's  such  a  fine  fellow  that  it  would  be 
really  a  great  pity,  eh  ?" 

"  I  shall  praise  him  no  more,"  Rowland  said. 

She  turned  away  quickly,  but  she  lingered  still. 
"  Do  you  remember  promising  me,  soon  after  we  first 
met,  that  at  the  end  of  six  months  you  would  tell  me 
definitely  what  you  thought  of  me  ?" 

"It  was  a  foolish  promise." 

"You  gave  it.  Bear  it  in  mind.  I  shall  think  of 
what  you  've  said  to  me.  Farewell."  The  two 
women  stepped  into  the  carriage  and  it  rolled  away. 
Rowland  stood  for  some  minutes  looking  after  it,  and 

290 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

then  went  his  way  with  a  sigh.  If  this  expressed  gen 
eral  mistrust  he  ought  three  days  afterwards  to  have 
been  reassured.  He  received  by  the  post  a  note  con 
taining  these  words  — 

"  I  Ve  done  it.  Begin  to  respect  me! 

"C.  L." 

To  be  perfectly  satisfactory,  indeed,  the  note 
required  a  commentary.  Calling  that  evening  upon 
Roderick,  he  found  one  in  the  information  offered 
him  at  the  door  by  the  old  serving-woman  —  the 
startling  information  that  the  signorina  had  'gone  to 
Naples. 


XV 


ABOUT  a  month  later  Rowland  addressed  to  his 
cousin  Cecilia  a  letter  of  which  the  following  is  a 
portion. 

"...  So  much  for  myself;  yet  I  tell  you  but  a 
tithe  of  my  own  story  unless  I  let  you  know  how 
matters  stand  with  poor  Hudson,  for  he  gives  me 
more  to  think  about  just  now  than  anything  else  in 
the  world.  I  need  a  good  deal  of  courage  to  begin 
this  chapter.  You  warned  me,  you  know,  and  I 
made  rather  light  of  your  warning.  I  've  had  all 
kinds  of  hopes  and  fears,  but  hitherto,  in  writing 
to  you,  I  've  resolutely  put  the  hopes  foremost.  Now, 
however,  my  pride  has  forsaken  me,  and  I  should 
like  hugely  to  give  expression  to  a  little  comfortable 
despair.  I  should  like  to  say,  '  My  dear  wise  cousin, 
you  were  right  and  I  was  wrong;  you  were  a  shrewd 
observer  and  I  was  a  meddlesome  donkey!'  When 
I  think  of  a  certain  talk  we  had  about  the  *  salu 
brity  of  genius  '  I  feel  my  ears  tingle.  If  what  I  Ve 
seen  is  salubrity  give  me  raging  disease.  I  'm  pes 
tered  past  bearing  ;  I  go  about  with  a  chronic  heart 
ache  ;  there  are  moments  when  I  could  shed  salt 
tears.  There  's  a  pretty  portrait  of  your  dear  dull 
kinsman.  I  wish  I  could  make  you  understand  ;  or 
rather  I  wish  you  could  make  me.  I  don't  under 
stand  a  jot  ;  it 's  a  hideous,  mocking  mystery  ;  I 
give  it  up.  I  don't  in  the  least  give  it  up,  you  know  ; 

292 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

I  'm  incapable  of  giving  it  up.  I  sit  holding  my  head 
by  the  hour,  racking  my  brain,  wondering  what  to 
invent.  You  told  me  at  Northampton  that  I  took 
the  thing  too  lightly;  you  'd  tell  me  now  perhaps 
that  I  take  it  too  hard.  I  do,  altogether;  but  it  can't 
be  helped.  Without  flattering  myself  I  may  say  that 
I  'm  cursed  with  sympathy  —  I  mean  as  an  active 
faculty,  the  last  of  fond  follies,  the  last  of  my  own. 
Wiser  men,  before  this,  would  have  cast  their  wor 
ries  to  the  winds  and  settled  that  the  bel  enfant  of 
my  adoption  must  lie  on  his  bed  as  he  has  made  it. 
Some  people  perhaps  would  even  say  I  'm  mak 
ing  my  ado  about  nothing,  that  I  'm  crying  out  be 
fore  I  'm  hurt,  or  at  least  before  he  is;  and  that 
in  short  I  've  only  to  give  him  rope  and  he  '11  tire 
himself  out.  He  tugs  at  his  rope,  however,  much 
too  hard  for  me  to  hold  it  comfortably.  I  certainly 
never  pretended  the  thing  was  anything  but  an  ex 
periment;  I  promised  nothing,  I  answered  for  no 
thing;  I  only  said  that  the  case  was  hopeful  and  it 
would  be  a  shame  not  to  give  him  a  chance.  I  've 
done  my  best,  and  if  the  machine  's  running  down 
I  've  a  right  to  stand  aside  and  let  it  rattle.  Amen, 
amen!  No,  I  can  write  that,  but  I  can't  feel  it.  I 
can't  be  just;  I  can  only  be  insanely  romantic.  I  'm 
too  abjectly  fond  of  the  hapless  youth;  I  can  never 
give  him  up.  As  for  understanding  him,  that 's 
another  matter;  nowadays  I  don't  believe  even  you 
would.  One's  intelligence  sometimes  really  ceases 
to  serve  one  over  here,  and  I  'm  in  the  way  of  see 
ing  more  than  one  quaint  specimen  of  human  na 
ture.  Roderick  and  Miss  Light,  between  them!  .  .  . 

293 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Have  n't  I  already  told  you  about  Miss  Light  ?  Last 
winter  everything  was  perfection.  Roderick  struck 
out  bravely,  did  really  great  things  —  proved  himself, 
as  I  supposed,  sound  all  through.  He  was  strong, 
he  was  first-rate;  I  felt  perfectly  secure,  and  paid 
myself  the  most  fulsome  compliments.  We  had 
passed  at  a  bound  into  the  open  sea  and  left  dan 
ger  behind.  But  in  the  summer  I  began  to  be  un 
easy,  though  I  succeeded  in  keeping  down  alarm. 
When  he  came  back  to  Rome,  however,  I  saw  that 
the  tide  had  turned  and  that  we  were  close  upon 
the  rocks.  It 's  in  fact  another  case  of  Ulysses  and 
the  Sirens;  only  Roderick  refuses  to  be  tied  to  the 
mast.  He 's  the  most  extraordinary  being,  the 
strangest  mixture  of  the  clear  and  the  obscure.  I 
don't  understand  so  much  power  —  because  it  is 
power  —  going  with  so  much  weakness,  such  a 
brilliant  gift  being  subject  to  such  lapses.  The  poor 
fellow  is  n't  made  right,  and  it 's  really  not  his  fault; 
Nature  has  given  him  his  faculty  out  of  hand  and 
bidden  him  be  hanged  with  it.  It 's  as  if  she  had 
shied  her  great  gold  brick  at  him  and  cried  'Look 
out  for  your  head!'  I  never  knew  a  creature  harder 
to  advise  or  assist  when  he  's  not  in  the  mood  for 
listening.  I  suppose  there  's  some  key  or  other  to 
his  tangle,  but  I  try  in  vain  to  find  it;  and  yet  I 
can't  believe  our  stars  so  cruel  as  simply  to  have 
turned  the  lock  and  thrown  the  key  away.  He  makes 
a  notorious  fool  of  me,  and  if  he  tires  out  my  tem 
per  he  does  n't  my  attention.  Sometimes  I  think  he 
has  n't  a  grain  of  conscience  and  sometimes  I  find 
him  all  too  morbidly  scrupulous.  He  takes  things 

294 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

at  once  too  easy  and  too  hard  —  it  depends  on  what 
they  are  —  and  has  found  means  to  be  both  loose  and 
rigid,  indifferent  and  passionate.  He  has  developed 
faster  even  than  you  prophesied,  and  for  good  and 
evil  alike  he  takes  up  a  formidable  space.  There  's 
too  much  of  him  for  me,  at  any  rate.  Yes,  he  is 
hard;  there's  no  mistake  about  that.  He's  inflex 
ible,  he  's  brittle;  and  though  he  has  plenty  of  spirit, 
plenty  of  soul,  he  has  n't  what  I  call  a  heart.  He 
has  something  that  Miss  Garland  took  for  one,  and 
I  suppose  her  a  judge.  But  she  judged  on  scanty 
evidence.  He  has  something  that  Christina  Light, 
here,  makes  believe  at  times  that  she  takes  for  one, 
but  she  's  no  judge  at  all.  I  think  it  established  that 
in  the  long  run  egotism  (in  too  big  a  dose)  makes 
a  failure  in  conduct:  is  it  also  true  that  it  makes  a 
failure  in  the  arts  ?  .  .  .  Roderick's  standard  is 
immensely  high;  I  must  do  him  that  justice.  He  '11 
do  nothing  beneath  it,  and  while  he  's  waiting  for 
the  vision  to  descend  his  imagination,  his  nerves,  his 
senses  must  have  something:  to  amuse  them.  This 

O 

is  my  elegant  way  of  breaking  it  to  you  that  he  has 
taken  to  riotous  living  and  has  just  been  spending 
a  month  at  Naples  —  a  city  where  amusement  is 
actively  cultivated  —  in  very  bad  company.  Are 
they  all  like  that,  all  the  men  of  genius  ?  There  are 
a  great  many  artists  here  who  hammer  away  at  their 
trade  with  exemplary  diligence;  in  fact  I  'm  sur 
prised  at  their  success  in  reducing  the  matter  to  a 
virtuous  habit;  but  I  really  don't  think  that  one  of 
them  has  his  exquisite  quality  of  talent.  The  talent's 
there,  it  's  the  application  that  has  broken  down. 

295 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Nothing  comes  out  of  the  bottle;  he  turns  it  upside 
down;  it  refuses  to  flow.  Sometimes  he  declares 
it 's  empty  —  that  he  has  done  all  he  was  made  to 
do.  This  I  consider  great  nonsense;  but  I  would 
nevertheless  take  him  on  his  own  terms  if  it  were 
only  I  that  am  concerned.  But  I  keep  thinking  of 
those  two  praying,  trusting  neighbours  of  yours,  and 
I  feel  like  a  bad  bungler  when  I  don't  feel  like  a 
swindler.  If  his  working  mood  came  at  its  inter 
vals,  fixed  ones,  I  'd  willingly  wait  for  it  and  keep 
him  on  his  legs  somehow  or  other  between  ;  but  that 
would  be  a  sorry  account  to  present  to  them!  A  few 
years  of  this  sort  of  thing,  moreover,  would  effec 
tually  settle  the  question.  I  wish,  heaven  forgive 
me,  that  he  were  less  of  a  genius  and  more  of  a  char 
latan.  He  's  too  confoundedly  all  of  one  piece;  he 
won't  throw  overboard  a  grain  of  the  cargo  to  save 
the  rest.  Fancy  him  thus  with  all  his  brilliant  per 
sonal  charm,  his  handsome  head,  his  careless  step, 
his  look  as  of  a  nervous  nineteenth-century  Apollo, 
and  you  '11  understand  that  there 's  mighty  little 
comfort  in  seeing  him  spoil  on  the  tree.  He  was  ex 
tremely  perverse  last  summer  at  Baden-Baden,  but 
he  finally  pulled  together  and  for  some  time  was 
steady.  Then  he  began  to  knock  about  again  and 
at  last  toppled  over.  Now,  literally,  he  's  lying  prone. 
He  came  into  my  room  last  night  miserably  the 
worse  for  liquor.  I  assure  you  it  did  n't  amuse  me. 
.  .  .  About  Miss  Light  it 's  a  long  story.  She  's 
one  of  the  great  beauties  of  all  time  and  worth  com 
ing  barefoot  to  Rome,  like  the  pilgrims  of  old,  to 
see.  Her  complexion,  her  eyes,  her  step,  the  plant- 

296 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

ing  and  the  mass  of  her  dusky  tresses,  may  have 
been  seen  before  in  a  goddess  on  a  cloud  or  a  nymph 
on  a  Greek  gem,  but  never  in  a  mere  modern  girl. 
And  you  may  take  this  for  truth,  because  I  'm  not 
in  love  with  her.  On  the  contrary  I  sometimes  quite 
detest  her.  Her  education  has  been  simply  infernal. 
She  is  corrupt,  perverse,  as  proud  as  a  potentate, 
and  a  coquette  of  the  first  magnitude;  but  she  's 
intelligent  and  bold  and  free,  and  so  awfully  on  the 
lookout  for  sensations  that  if  you  set  rightly  to  work 
you  may  enlist  her  imagination  in  a  good  cause  as 
well  as  in  a  bad.  The  other  day  I  tried  to  bring  it 
over  to  my  side.  I  happened  to  have  some  talk  with 
her  to  which  it  was  possible  to  give  a  serious  turn, 
and  I  boldly  broke  ground  and  begged  her  to  suffer 
my  poor  friend  to  go  in  peace.  After  leading  me 
rather  a  dance  —  in  conversation  —  she  consented, 
and  the  next  day,  with  a  single  word,  she  packed 
him  off  to  Naples  to  drown  his  humiliation  in 
poisonous  waters.  I  've  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
she  's  more  dangerous  in  her  virtuous  moods  than 
in  her  vicious,  and  that  she  probably  has  a  way  of 
turning  her  back  which  is  the  most  maddening 
thing  in  the  world.  She  's  an  actress,  she  could  n't 
forego  doing  it  with  a  flourish,  and  it  was  just  the 
flourish  that  made  it  work  wrong.  I  wished  her  of 
course  to  let  him  down  easy;  but  she  must  have 
the  curtain  drop  on  an  attitude,  and  her  attitudes 
don't  in  the  least  do  for  inflammable  natures.  .  .  . 
Roderick  made  an  admirable  bust  of  her  at  the 
beginning  of  the  winter,  and  a  dozen  women  came 
rushing  to  him  to  be  done,  mutatis  mutandis,  in  the 

297 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

same  style.  They  were  all  great  ladies  and  ready 
to  take  him  by  the  hand,  but  he  told  them  all  their 
faces  did  n't  interest  him  pour  deux  sous  and  sent 
them  away  vowing  his  destruction." 

At  this  stage  of  his  long  burst  of  confidence  Row 
land  had  paused  and  put  by  his  letter.  He  kept  it 
three  days  and  then  read  it  over.  He  was  disposed 
thereupon  to  destroy  it,  but  he  decided  finally  to 
keep  it,  in  the  hope  that  it  might  strike  a  spark  of 
useful  suggestion  from  the  flint  of  Cecilia's  good 
sense.  We  know  he  had  a  talent  for  taking  advice. 
And  then  it  might  be,  he  reflected,  that  his  cousin's 
answer  would  throw  some  light  on  Mary  Garland's 
present  vision  of  things.  In  his  altered  mood  he 
added  a  few  lines. 

"  I  unburdened  myself  the  other  day  of  this  mon 
strous  load  of  anxiety;  I  think  it  did  me  good,  and  I 
now  let  it  stand.  I  was  in  a  melancholy  muddle  and 
was  trying  to  lash  myself  out  of  it.  You  know  I  like 
discussion  in  a  quiet  way,  and  there  's  no  one  with 
whom  I  can  have  it  as  quietly  as  with  you,  most 
abysmal  of  cousins.  There  's  a  sharp  old  lady  here 
with  whom  I  often  confer  and  who  talks  very  much  to 
the  point.  But  Madame  Grandoni  has  disliked  Rod 
erick  from  the  first,  and  if  I  were  to  take  her  advice 
I  would  wash  my  hands  of  him.  You  would  laugh  at 
me  for  my  long  face,  but  you  would  do  that  in  any 
circumstances.  I  'm  half  ashamed  of  my  letter,  for 
I  Ve  a  faith  in  our  friend  that 's  deeper  than  my  doubts. 
He  was  here  last  evening,  talking  about  the  Naples 
Museum,  the  Aristides,  the  bronzes,  the  Pompeian 
frescoes,  with  such  a  beautiful  intelligence  that  doubt 

208 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  the  ultimate  future  seemed  blasphemy.  I  walked 
back  to  his  lodging  with  him,  and  he  was  as  mild  as 
midsummer  moonlight.  He  has  that  ineffable  some 
thing  that  charms  and  convinces;  my  last  word  about 
him  shall  not  be  a  harsh  one." 

Shortly  after  sending  his  letter,  going  one  day  into 
his  friend's  studio,  he  found  Roderick  suffering  the 
honourable  torture  of  a  visit  from  Mr.  Leavenworth. 
The  young  man  submitted  with  extreme  ill  grace  to 
being  bored,  and  he  was  now  evidently  in  a  state  of 
high  exasperation.  He  had  lately  begun  a  representa 
tion  of  a  lazzarone  lounging  in  the  sun;  an  image  of 
serene,  irresponsible,  sensuous  life.  The  real  lazza 
rone,  he  had  admitted,  was  a  vile  fellow;  but  the 
ideal  lazzarone  —  and  his  own  had  been  subtly 
idealised  —  was  the  flower  of  a  perfect  civilisation. 

Mr.  Leavenworth  had  apparently  just  transferred 
his  spacious  gaze  to  the  figure.  "Something  in  the 
style  of  the  Dying  Gladiator?"  he  sympathetically 
observed. 

"Oh  no,"  said  Roderick,  seriously,  "he's  not 
dying,  he  's  only  drunk." 

"Ah,  but  intoxication,  you  know,"  Mr.  Leaven 
worth  rejoined,  "  is  not  a  proper  subject  for  sculpture. 
Sculpture  should  n't  deal  with  transitory  attitudes." 

"Lying  dead  drunk  's  not  a  transitory  attitude. 
Nothing 's  more  permanent,  more  sculpturesque, 
more  monumental." 

"An  entertaining  paradox,"  said  Mr.  Leavenworth, 
"  if  we  had  time  to  exercise  our  wits  upon  it.  I  re 
member  at  Florence  an  intoxicated  figure  by  Michael 
Angelo  which  seemed  to  me  a  deplorable  aberration 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  a  great  mind.  I  myself  touch  liquor  in  no  shape 
whatever.  I  have  travelled  through  Europe  on  cold 
water.  The  most  varied  and  attractive  lists  of  wines 
are  offered  me,  but  I  brush  them  aside.  No  cork  has 
ever  been  drawn  at  my  command." 

"The  movement  of  drawing  a  cork  calls  into  play 
a  very  pretty  set  of  muscles,"  said  Roderick.  "  jolly 
to  make  a  figure  in  that  position." 

"A  Bacchus  realistically  treated  ?  My  dear  young 
friend,  never  trifle  with  your  lofty  mission.  Spotless 
marble  seems  to  me  false  to  itself  when  it  represents 
anything  less  than  Conscious  Temperance  —  'the 
golden  mean '  in  all  things."  And  while  Mr.  Leaven- 
worth  threw  back  his  head,  squared  his  shoulders  and 
heaved  his  torso,  as  if  to  exorcise  the  spirit  of  levity, 
his  attention  broke  again  like  a  slow  wave,  this 
time  on  a  marble  replica  of  the  bust  of  Christina. 
"An  ideal  head,  I  presume,"  he  went  on;  "a  fanci 
ful  representation  of  one  of  the  pagan  goddesses  —  a 
Diana,  a  Flora,  a  naiad,  a  dryad  ?  I  often  regret  that 
our  American  artists  should  not  boldly  break  with 
those  artificial  appellations." 

"She's  neither  a  naiad  nor  a  dryad,"  said  Roderick, 
"and  her  appellation  's  as  good  as  yours  or  mine." 

"You  call  her  —  ?"  Mr.  Leavenworth  blandly 
enquired. 

"Christina  Light,"  Rowland  interposed  in  charity. 

"Ah,  our  great  American  beauty?  Not  a  pagan 
goddess  —  an  American  Christian  maiden.  Yes, 
I  've  had  the  pleasure  of  conversing  with  Miss  Light. 
Her  conversational  powers  are  not  quite  what  one 
might  have  expected,  but  her  beauty  's  of  a  high 

300 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

order.  I  observed  her  the  other  evening  at  a  large 
party  where  some  of  the  proudest  members  of  the 
European  aristocracy  were  present  —  duchesses, 
princesses,  countesses  and  others  distinguished  by 
similar  titles.  But  for  beauty,  grace  and  elegance  our 
young  countrywoman  left  them  all  nowhere.  What 
woman  can  compare  with  a  refined  and  cultivated 
American  lady  ?  The  duchesses  the  other  night  had 
no  attractions  for  my  eyes;  they  looked  coarse  and 
bold  and  sensual.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  tyranny  of 
class  distinctions  must  indeed  be  terrible  when  such 
countenances  could  inspire  admiration.  You  see  more 
beautiful  girls  in  an  hour  on  Broadway  than  in  the 
whole  tour  of  Europe.  Miss  Light  now,  on  Broadway, 
would  excite  no  particular  remark." 

"Oh,  damn  Broadway!'*   Roderick  murmured. 

Mr.  Leavenworth  stared  as  if  this  were  unpatri 
otic;  then  he  resumed  almost  severely:  "I  suppose 
you  Ve  heard  the  news  about  our  lovely  compatriot." 

"What  news  ?"  Roderick  had  stood  with  his  back 
turned,  fiercely  poking  at  his  lazzarone  ;  but  at  Mr. 
Leavenworth's  last  words  he  faced  quickly  about. 

"  It 's  the  news  of  the  hour,  I  believe.  Miss  Light  is 
admired  by  the  highest  people  here.  They  tacitly 
recognise  her  superiority.  She  has  had  offers  of  mar 
riage  from  very  prominent  people  —  as  such  people 
go  in  this  part  of  the  world.  I  was  extremely  glad  to 
hear  it  and  to  learn  that  they  had  mostly  been  left 
sighing.  She  has  not  been  dazzled  by  their  titles  and 
pedigrees  and  pretensions,  by  their  gilded  coronets. 
She  has  judged  them  simply  as  real  men,  and  by  that 
measure  has  found  them  wanting.  One  of  them,  how- 

301 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ever,  a  young  Neapolitan  prince,  I  believe,  has,  after 
a  long  probation,  succeeded  in  making  himself  accept 
able.  Miss  Light  has  at  last  smiled  upon  him  and 
the  engagement  has  just  been  announced.  I  'm  not 
generally  a  retailer  of  the  gossip  of  the  passing  hour, 
but  the  fact  was  alluded  to  an  hour  ago  by  a  lady 
to  whom  I  had  been  presented,  and  subjects  of  interest 
seem  scarcely  numerous  enough,  in  Europe,  to  dis 
pense  with  the  aid  of  these  conversational  futilities. 
I  therefore  suffered  myself  to  be  —  as  I  may  say  — 
impressed.  Yes,  I  regret  that  Miss  Light  should  ally 
herself  with  a  purely  conventional  character.  Ameri 
cans  should  stand  by  each  other.  If  she  wanted  a 
brilliant  match  we  could  have  organised  it  for  her. 
If  she  wanted  a  fine  bright  fellow  —  a  specimen  of 
clean  comfortable  white  humanity  —  I  would  have 
undertaken  to  find  him  for  her  without  going  out  of 
my  native  State.  And  if  she  wanted  a  big  fortune  I 
would  have  found  her  twenty  that  she  would  have  had 
hard  work  to  make  an  impression  on;  money  right 
there  in  convertible  securities  —  not  tied  up  in  fever- 
stricken  lands  and  worm-eaten  villas.  What 's  the 
name  of  the  young  man  ?  Prince  Cantimasher  or  some 
such  thing!"  It  was  well  for  Mr.  Leavenworth  that 
he  was  fond  of  listening  to  his  own  correct  periods;  for 
the  current  of  his  eloquence  floated  him  past  the  short, 
sharp,  startled  cry  with  which  Roderick  greeted  his 
anecdote.  The  young  man  stood  looking  at  him  with 
parted  lips  and  an  excited  eye.  "The  position  of 
woman,"  he  imperturbably  resumed,  "is  certainly  a 
very  degraded  one  in  these  countries.  I  doubt  if  a 
European  princess  commands  the  true  respect  which 

302 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  our  country  is  exhibited  to  the  obscurest  females. 
The  civilisation  of  a  country  should  be  measured  by 
the  deference  shown  to  the  weaker  sex.  Judged  by 
that  standard,  where  are  they  over  here  ?" 

Though  Mr.  Leavenworth  had  not  observed  Rod 
erick's  emotion  it  was  not  lost  upon  Rowland,  who 
was  making  sundry  uncomfortable  reflexions  upon 
it.  He  saw  that  it  had  instantly  become  one  with  the 
acute  irritation  produced  by  the  poor  gentleman's 
large  inevitable  oratory,  and  that  an  explosion  of 
some  sort  was  imminent.  Mr.  Leavenworth,  with 
calm  unconsciousness,  proceeded  to  fire  the  mine. 

"And  now,  please,  for  my  Creation!"  he  said  with 
the  same  grandiloquence,  demanding  by  a  gesture  the 
discovery  of  the  muffled  mass  that,  standing  some 
what  apart,  had  represented  for  some  time  past  the 
young  sculptor's  partial  response  to  his  encouraging 
order. 

Roderick  stood  looking  at  him  a  moment  with 
concentrated  rancour  and  then  strode  to  the  indi 
cated  object  and  twitched  ofF  the  sheet.  Mr.  Leaven 
worth  settled  himself  into  his  chair  with  an  air  of 
flattered  proprietorship  and  scanned  the  unfinished 
image.  "I  can  conscientiously  express  myself  as 
gratified  with  the  general  conception,"  he  said.  "The 
figure  has  considerable  majesty  and  the  countenance 
wears  a  fine  open  expression.  The  cerebral  develop 
ment,  however,  strikes  me  as  not  sufficiently  empha 
sised.  Our  subject  being,  as  we  called  it  —  did  n't 
we  ?  —  Intellectual  Refinement,  there  should  be  no 
mistaking  the  intellect,  symbolised  (would  n't  it 
be  ?)  by  an  unmistakeably  thoughtful  brow.  The 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

eye  should  instinctively  seek  the  frontal  indications. 
Could  n't  you  strengthen  them  a  little  ?" 

Roderick,  for  all  answer,  tossed  the  sheet  back  over 
the  statue.  "  Oblige  me,  sir,"  he  said,  "  I  beg  you  to 
oblige  me.  Never  mention  that  thing  again." 

"Never  mention  it  ?  Why,  my  dear  sir  — !  " 

"Never  mention  it.   It  's  a  base  fraud." 

"  Base  ?   My  grand  conception  ?" 

"Yours  indeed!"  cried  Roderick.  "It's  none  of 
mine.  I  disown  it." 

"Disown  it  if  you  please,"  said  Mr.  Leavenworth, 
now  sternly  enough,  "but  finish  it  first!" 

"I  would  much  rather  smash  it!"  Roderick  re 
turned. 

"This  is  petulant  folly,  sir.  You  must  keep  your 
engagements." 

"I  made  no  engagement.  A  sculptor  is  n't  a  tailor, 
and  I  did  n't  measure  you  for  a  pair  of  trousers.  Did 
you  ever  hear  of  inspiration?  Mine's  dead!  And 
it  Js  no  laughing  matter.  You  yourself  killed  it." 

"I  —  I  —  killed  your  inspiration?"  cried  Mr. 
Leavenworth  with  the  accent  of  righteous  wrath. 
"You're  a  very  ungrateful  young  man!  My  desire 
has  been  that  you  should  feel  yourself  encouraged 
and  so  far  as  possible  inspired." 

"I  appreciate  your  kindness,  and  I  don't  wish  to 
be  uncivil.  But  your  interest  is  somehow  fatal  to  me. 
I  object  to  your  interest.  I  can't  work  for  you." 

"I  call  this  gross  ill-humour,  my  good  sir!"  said  Mr. 
Leavenworth,  as  if  he  had  found  the  damning  word. 

"Oh,  I  'm  in  a  perfectly  infernal  humour!"  Rod 
erick  now  quite  cheerfully  answered. 

3°4 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Pray,  sir,  is  it  produced  by  my  inopportune 
allusion  to  Miss  Light's  marriage  ?" 

"  It 's  produced  by  your  inopportune  everything. 
I  don't  say  that  to  offend  you;  I  beg  your  pardon  if  it 
does.  I  say  it  by  way  of  making  our  rupture  complete 
and  irretrievable." 

Rowland  had  stood  by  in  silence,  but  he  now 
interfered.  "  Listen  to  me  well,"  he  said,  laying  his 
hand  on  Roderick's  arm.  "You're  standing  on  the 
edge  of  a  very  deep  sea.  If  you  suffer  this  accident 
to  put  you  out,  you  take  your  plunge.  It 's  no  mat 
ter  at  all  that  you  don't  like  your  work;  it's  no 
matter  at  all  —  if  he  '11  magnanimously  allow  me 
to  say  so  —  that  you  don't  even  like  Mr.  Leaven- 
worth:  to  whom  it  certainly  is  n't  any  matter  either! 
You  '11  do  the  wisest  thing  you  ever  did  if  you  mus 
ter  the  resolution  not  to  chuck  up  a  commission  so 
definitely  accepted.  Make  the  effort  necessary  at  least 
for  finishing  your  job.  Then  destroy  what  you  've 
done,  if  you  like;  but  finish  it  first  and  see.  I  speak 
only  the  truth." 

Roderick  looked  at  him  with  eyes  that  regret  for 
impossibility  made  almost  tender.  "You  too?"  he 
simply  said. 

He  felt  he  might  as  well  attempt  to  squeeze  water 
from  a  polished  crystal  as  hope  to  move  him.  He 
turned  away  and  walked  into  the  adjoining  room 
with  a  sense  of  sickening  helplessness.  In  a  few 
moments  he  came  back  and  found  that  Mr.  Leaven- 
/orth  had  departed  —  he  really  hoped  with  due 
superiority.  Roderick  was  sitting  with  his  elbows 
>n  his  knees  and  his  head  in  his  hands.  Rowland 

305 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

made  one  more  attempt.  "You  won't  mind  me  the 
least  little  bit  ?" 

"Be  so  good  as  not  to  mind  me  !  " 

"There  's  one  more  point:  that  you  should  make 
and  keep  a  resolve  not  to  go  back  —  for  the  present 
at  least  —  to  Mrs.  Light's." 

"I  shall  go  back  this  evening." 

"That  too  is  fatal  folly." 

"Well,"  Roderick  smiled,  "when  one's  a  fatalist 
as  well  as  a  fool  — !" 

"You  talk  like  a  slave,  not  like  a  free  agent." 

"Why  then  do  you  make  me  talk  ?" 

Rowland  meditated  a  moment.  "Are  your  fatal 
ism  and  your  folly  prepared  to  lose  you  the  best 
friend  you  have  ?" 

Roderick  looked  up;  he  still  smiled.  "I  defy 
them  to  rid  me  — !" 

His  best  friend  clapped  on  that  gentleman's  hat 
and  strode  away;  in  a  moment  the  door  sharply 
closed. 


XVI 

THIS  obscure  hero  walked  hard  for  a  couple  of  hours. 
He  passed  up  the  Corso,  out  of  Porta  del  Popolo 
and  into  Villa  Borghese,  of  which  he  made  a  com 
plete  circuit.  The  keenness  of  his  irritation  sub 
sided,  but  it  left  an  intolerable  weight  on  his  heart. 
When  dusk  had  fallen  he  found  himself  near  the 
lodging  of  his  friend  Madame  Grandoni.  He  fre 
quently  paid  her  a  visit  during  the  hour  which  pre 
ceded  dinner,  and  he  now  ascended  her  unillumined 
staircase  and  rang  at  her  relaxed  bell-rope  with  an 
especial  desire  for  diversion.  He  was  told  that  for 
the  moment  she  was  occupied,  but  that  if  he  would 
come  in  and  wait  she  would  presently  be  with  him. 
He  had  not  sat  musing  in  the  firelight  for  five  min 
utes  when  he  heard  the  jingle  of  the  door-bell  and 
then  a  rustle  and  a  murmur  in  the  hall.  The  door 
of  the  little  parlour  opened,  but  before  the  visitor 
appeared  he  had  recognised  her  voice.  Christina 
Light  swept  forward,  preceded  by  her  poodle  and 
almost  filling  the  narrow  room  with  the  train  of  her 
dress.  She  was  coloured  here  and  there  by  the  flick 
ering  firelight. 

"They  told  me  you  were  here,"  she  simply  said 
as  she  took  a  seat. 

"And  yet  you  came  in  ?   It  was  very  brave,"  Row 
land  returned. 

307 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"You  're  the  brave  one,  when  one  thinks  of  it! 
The  padrona  's  to  come  ?" 

"I  've  already  waited  some  minutes;  I  expect  her 
from  moment  to  moment." 

"Meanwhile  we're  alone?"  And  she  glanced  at 
the  duskier  background. 

"Unless  Stenterello  counts,"  said  Rowland. 

"Oh,  he  knows  my  secrets  —  unfortunate  brute!" 
She  sat  silent  a  while,  looking  into  the  firelight.  Then 
at  last,  glancing  at  Rowland,  "  Foyons  !  say  some 
thing  pleasant!"  she  exclaimed. 

"  I '  ve  been  very  happy  to  hear  of  your  engagement." 

"Oh,  I  don't  mean  that!  I  have  heard  that  so 
often,  only  since  breakfast,  that  it  has  lost  all  sense. 
I  mean  some  of  those  unexpected  charming  things 
that  you  said  to  me  a  month  ago  at  Saint  Cecilia's." 

"  I  did  n't  please  you  then,"  said  Rowland.  "  I 
was  afraid  I  had  n't." 

"Ah,  such  things  occur  to  you  ?  Then  why  have 
n't  I  seen  you  since  ?" 

"Really  I  don't  know."  And  he  hesitated  for  an 
explanation.  "  I  think  I  must  have  called  —  but 
you  've  never  been  at  home." 

"You  were  careful  to  choose  the  wrong  times. 
You  have  a  way  with  a  poor  girl!  You  sit  down  and 
state  to  her  that  she  's  a  person  with  whom  a  re 
spectable  young  man  can't  associate  without  con 
tamination;  your  friend  's  a  very  superior  person, 
you  're  very  careful  of  his  morals,  you  wish  him  to 
know  none  but  nice  people,  and  you  beg  me  there 
fore  to  desist.  You  request  me  to  take  these  sug 
gestions  to  heart  and  to  act  upon  them  as  promptly  as 

308 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

possible.  They  're  not  particularly  flattering  to  my 
vanity.  Vanity,  however,  is  a  sin,  and  I  listen  sub 
missively,  with  an  immense  desire  to  be  just.  If  I 
have  many  faults  I  know  it  in  a  general  way,  and  I 
try,  on  the  whole,  to  do  my  best.  '  foyons,'  I  say  to 
myself, '  it  is  n't  particularly  charming  to  hear  one's 
self  made  out  a  pig,  but  it's  worth  thinking  over; 
there  's  probably  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  it  and  at  any 
rate  we  must  be  as  good  a  girl  as  we  can.  That 's  the 
great  point!  And  then  here  's  a  magnificent  chance 
for  humility.  If  there  's  doubt  in  the  matter,  let 
the  doubt  count  against  one's  self.  It 's  what  Saint 
Catherine  did,  and  Saint  Theresa,  and  all  the  others, 
and  they  're  said  to  have  had  in  consequence  the 
most  ineffable  joys.  Let  us  go  in  for  a  little  ineffable 
joy.'  I  tried  it;  I  swallowed  my  rising  sobs,  I  made 
you  my  curtsey,  I  determined  I  would  n't  be  spite 
ful,  nor  passionate,  nor  vengeful,  nor  anything  that 's 
supposed  to  be  particularly  feminine  and  that  ces 
dames,  now  saints  in  heaven,  would  n't  have  been. 
I  was  a  better  girl  than  you  made  out  —  better  at 
least  than  you  thought;  but  I  would  let  the  differ 
ence  go,  and  do  magnificently  right  lest  I  should 
not  do  right  enough.  I  thought  of  it  a  great  deal 
for  six  hours,  when  I  know  I  did  n't  seem  to  be  think 
ing,  and  then  at  last  I  did  it.  Santo  Dio  !  " 

"My  dear  Miss  Light,  my  dear  Miss  Light!" 
her  companion  rather  vaguely  pleaded. 

"Since  then,"  the  young  girl  went  on,  "I've 
been  waiting  for  the  ineffable  joys.  But  they  're 
dividends,  on  my  speculation,  that  have  n't  yet 
begun  to  come  in." 

3°9 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  Pray,  listen  to  me  !  "  Rowland  began. 

"Nothing,  nothing,  nothing  has  come  of  it.  I  Ve 
passed  the  dreariest  month  of  my  life." 

"You're  a  very  terrible  young  woman,"  Row 
land  remarked. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"A  good  many  things.  We'll  talk  them  over. 
But  first  forgive  me  if  I  really  wounded  you." 

She  looked  at  him  a  moment,  hesitating,  and 
then  thrust  her  hands  into  her  muff.  "That  means 
nothing.  Forgiveness  is  between  equals,  and  you 
don't  regard  me  as  your  equal." 

"How  do  you  make  it  out  ?" 

Christina  rose  and  moved  for  a  moment  about 
the  room.  Then  turning  suddenly,  "You  don't  be 
lieve  in  me!"  she  cried;  "not  a  grain!  I  don't  know 
what  I  would  n't  give  to  force  you  to  believe  in  me!" 

Rowland  sprang  up,  protesting,  but  before  he 
had  time  to  go  far  one  of  the  scanty  portieres  was 
raised  and  Madame  Grandoni  came  in,  pulling  her 
wig  straight.  "You  shall  believe  in  me  yet,  you 
know,"  Christina  murmured  as  she  passed  toward 
her  hostess. 

Madame  Grandoni  turned  tenderly  to  her  young 
friend.  "I  must  give  you  a  very  solemn  kiss,  my 
dear;  you  're  the  heroine  of  the  hour.  You  Ve 
really  accepted  him,  eh  ?" 

"So  they  say!" 

"  But  you  ought  to  know  best." 

"I  don't  know  —  I  don't  care!"  She  stood  with 
her  hand  in  Madame  Grandoni's,  but  looking  as 
kance  at  Rowland. 

310 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"That 's  a  pretty  state  of  mind,"  said  the  old  lady, 
"for  a  young  person  who's  going  to  be  so  great." 

Christina  shrugged  her  shoulders.  "Every  one 
expects  me  to  go  into  ecstasies  over  my  greatness. 
Could  anything  be  more  vulgar  ?  Let  others  do  the 
gloating.  Mamma  will  do  any  amount.  Will  you 
let  me  stay  to  dinner  ?" 

"If  you  can  dine  on  black  bread  and  onions.  But 
I  imagine  you  're  expected  at  home." 

"Nothing  's  more  certain.  Prince  Casamassima 
dines  there  en  famille.  I  'm  not  of  his  family  yet!" 

"Do  you  know  you're  very  wicked?"  the  old 
lady  asked.  "  I  've  half  a  mind  not  to  keep  you." 

Christina  dropped  her  eyes  reflectively.  "I  wish 
awfully  you  'd  let  me  stay,"  she  said.  "  If  you  want 
to  cure  me  of  my  wickedness  you  must  be  very  pa 
tient  and  kind  with  me.  It  will  be  worth  the  trou 
ble.  You  must  show  confidence  in  me."  And  she 
gave  Rowland  another  look.  Then  suddenly,  in  a 
different  tone,  "I  don't  know  what  I'm  saying!" 
she  wailed.  "I'm  weary  and  dreary;  I  'm  more 
lonely  than  ever;  I  wish  I  were  dead!"  The  tears 
rose  to  her  eyes,  she  struggled  with  them  an  instant 
and  buried  her  face  in  her  mufF;  but  at  last  she 
burst  into  uncontrollable  sobs,  flinging  herself  on 
Madame  Grandoni's  neck.  This  shrewd  woman  gave 
Rowland  a  significant  nod  and  a  little  shrug  over 
the  young  girl's  beautiful  bowed  head,  and  then  led 
Christina  tenderly  away  into  the  adjoining  room. 
Rowland,  left  alone,  stood  there  for  an  instant, 
intolerably  puzzled,  face  to  face  with  Miss  Light's 
poodle,  who  had  set  up  a  sharp  unearthly  cry  of  sym- 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

pathy  with  his  mistress.  Rowland  vented  his  con 
fusion  in  dealing  a  rap  with  his  stick  at  the  animal's 
unmelodious  muzzle,  and  rapidly  quitted  the  house. 
He  saw  Mrs.  Light's  carriage  waiting  at  the  door, 
and  heard  afterwards  that  Christina  had  gone  home 
to  dinner. 

A  couple  of  days  later  he  went  for  a  fortnight  to 
Florence.  He  had  twenty  minds  to  leave  Italy 
altogether,  and  at  Florence  he  could  at  least  more 
freely  decide  upon  his  future  movements.  He  felt 
deeply,  incureably  disgusted.  Reflective  benevolence 
stood  prudently  aside  for  the  time,  touching  the 
source  of  his  irritation  with  no  softening  side-lights. 
It  was  the  middle  of  March,  however,  and  by  the 
middle  of  March,  in  Florence,  the  spring  is  already 
warm  and  deep.  He  had  an  infinite  taste  for  the 
place  and  the  season,  but  as  he  strolled  by  the  Arno 
and  paused  here  and  there  in  the  great  galleries 
they  failed  to  bring  balm  to  his  ache.  He  was  sore 
at  heart,  and  as  the  days  went  by  the  soreness 
rather  deepened  than  healed.  He  had  a  complaint 
against  fortune  and,  good-natured  as  he  was,  his 
good-nature  itself  now  took  up  the  quarrel.  He 
had  tried  to  be  wise,  he  had  tried  to  be  kind,  he 
had  engaged  in  an  estimable  enterprise;  but  his 
wisdom,  his  kindness,  his  labour,  had  all  been  thrown 
back  in  his  face.  He  was  intensely  disappointed, 
and  his  disappointment  for  a  while  burned  hot.  The 
sense  of  wasted  time,  of  wasted  hope  and  faith,  kept 
him  constant  company.  There  were  times  when 
the  beautiful  things  about  him  only  exasperated  his 
pain.  He  went  to  the  Pitti  Palace,  and  Raphael's 

312 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Madonna  of  the  Chair  seemed  in  its  soft  serenity 
to  mock  him  with  the  suggestion  of  unattainable 
repose.  He  lingered  on  the  bridges  at  sunset  and 
knew  that  the  light  was  enchanting  and  the  moun 
tains  divine,  but  there  seemed  something  horribly 
invidious  and  unwelcome  in  the  fact.  He  felt  him 
self,  in  a  word,  a  man  cruelly  defrauded  and  na 
turally  bent  on  revenge.  Life  owed  him,  he  thought, 
a  compensation  and  he  should  be  restless  and  re 
sentful  till  he  should  find  it.  He  knew  —  or  seemed 
to  know  —  where  he  should  find  it;  but  he  hardly 
told  himself,  thinking  of  it  under  mental  protest,  as 
a  man  in  want  of  money  may  think  of  funds  that  he 
holds  in  trust.  In  his  melancholy  meditation  the  idea 
of  something  better  than  all  this,  something  that 
might  softly,  richly  interpose,  that  might  reconcile 
him  to  the  future,  that  might  freshen  up  a  vision  of  life 
tainted  with  staleness — the  idea,  in  fine,  of  compen 
sation  in  concrete  form  found  itself  remarkably  re 
sembling  a  certain  young  woman  in  America,  shaped 
itself  sooner  or  later  into  the  image  of  Mary  Garland. 
Very  odd,  you  may  say,  that  at  this  time  of  day 
Rowland  should  still  be  brooding  over  a  girl  of  no 
brilliancy,  of  whom  he  had  had  a  bare  glimpse  two 
years  before;  very  odd  that  an  impression  should 
have  fixed  itself  so  sharply  under  so  few  applica 
tions  of  the  die.  It  is  of  the  very  nature  of  such  im 
pressions,  however,  to  show  a  total  never  represented 
by  the  mere  sum  of  their  constituent  parts.  One 
night  he  could  n't  sleep;  his  thought  was  too  urg 
ent;  it  kept  him  pacing  his  room.  His  windows 
were  on  the  Arno,  and  as  they  stood  open  the  noise 

3r3 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  the  river  came  in;  it  would  have  taken  little  more 
to  make  him  go  down  into  the  street.  Toward  morn 
ing  he  flung  himself  into  a  chair;  though  he  was 
wide  awake  he  was  now  less  a  prey  to  agitation. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  he  saw  his  idea  from  the  out 
side,  that  he  judged  it  and  condemned  it,  and  it 
stood  still  there  all  distinct  and  with  a  strange  face 
of  authority.  During  the  day  he  tried  to  keep  it 
down;  but  it  fascinated,  haunted,  at  moments  quite 
frightened  him.  He  tried  to  amuse  himself,  paid 
visits,  resorted  to  several  violent  devices  for  divert 
ing  his  thoughts.  If  he  had  been  guilty  on  the  mor 
row  of  some  misdeed  the  persons  he  had  seen  that 
day  would  have  testified  that  he  had  talked  inco 
herently  and  had  not  seemed  himself.  He  felt,  cer 
tainly,  very  much  somebody  else;  long  afterwards, 
in  retrospect,  he  used  to  perceive  that  during  those 
days  he  had  been  literally  beside  himself — even  as 
the  ass,  in  the  farmer's  row  of  stalls,  may  be  beside 
the  ox.  His  uncanny  idea  persisted;  it  clung  to  him 
like  a  sturdy  beggar.  The  sense  of  the  matter,  roughly 
expressed,  was  that  if  Roderick  were  really  going, 
as  he  himself  had  phrased  it,  to  fizzle  out,  one  might 
help  him  on  the  way  —  one  might  smooth  the  de- 
s census  Averni.  For  forty-eight  hours  there  swam 
before  Rowland's  eyes  a  vision  of  the  wondrous 
youth,  graceful  and  beautiful  as  he  passed,  plung 
ing  like  a  diver  into  a  misty  gulf.  The  gulf  was  de 
struction,  annihilation,  death;  but  if  death  had  been 
decreed  why  should  n't  the  agony  be  at  least  brief  ? 
Beyond  this  vision  there  faintly  glimmered  another, 
as  in  the  children's  game  of  the  magic  lantern  a  pic- 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ture  is  superposed  on  the  white  wall  before  the  last 
one  has  quite  faded.  It  represented  Mary  Garland 
standing  there  with  eyes  in  which  the  horror  seemed 
slowly,  slowly  to  expire,  and  hanging  motionless 
hands  which  at  last  made  no  resistance  when  his 
own  offered  to  take  them.  When  of  old  a  man  was 
burnt  at  the  stake  it  was  cruel  to  have  to  be  present; 
but,  one's  presence  assumed,  it  was  charity  to  lend 
a  hand,  to  pile  up  the  fuel  and  make  the  flames  do 
their  work  quickly  and  the  smoke  muffle  up  the 
victim.  And  it  did  n't  diminish  the  charity  that  this 
was  perhaps  an  obligation  especially  felt  if  one  had 
a  reversionary  interest  in  something  the  victim  was 
to  leave  behind. 

One  morning  in  the  midst  of  all  this  Rowland 
walked  heedlessly  out  of  a  florid  city  gate  and  found 
himself  on  the  road  to  Fiesole.  It  was  a  day  all  be 
nignant;  the  March  sun  felt  like  May,  as  the  English 
poet  of  Florence  says;  the  thick-blossomed  shrubs, 
the  high-climbing  plants  that  hung  over  the  walls  of 
villa  and  podere  flung  their  odorous  promise  into  the 
warm  still  air.  He  followed,  our  friend,  the  winding, 
mounting  lanes;  lingered  as  he  got  higher  beneath  the 
rusty  cypresses,  beside  the  low  parapets,  where  you 
look  down  on  the  charming  city  and  sweep  the  vale 
of  the  Arno;  reached  the  small  square  before  the 
cathedral  and  rested  a  while  in  the  massive,  dusky 
church;  then,  climbing  higher,  pushed  up  to  the 
Franciscan  convent  poised  on  the  very  apex  of  the 
great  hill.  He  rang  at  the  little  gateway;  a  shabby, 
senile,  red-faced  brother  admitted  him,  a  personage 
almost  maudlin  with  the  milk  of  human  kindness. 

315 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

There  was  a  dreary  chill  in  the  chapel  and  the  corri 
dors,  and  he  passed  rapidly  through  them  into  the 
delightfully  steep  and  tangled  old  garden  which  runs 
wild  over  the  forehead  of  the  mountain.  He  had  been 
there  before,  he  came  back  to  it  as  to  a  friend.  The 
garden  hangs  in  the  air,  and  you  ramble  from  terrace 
to  terrace  and  wonder  how  it  keeps  from  slipping 
down,  in  full  consummation  of  its  dishonour  and 
decay,  to  the  nakedly  romantic  gorge  beneath.  It  was 
just  noon  at  Rowland's  visit,  and  after  roaming  about 
a  while  he  flung  himself  on  the  sun-warmed  slab  of  a 
mossy  stone  bench  and  pulled  his  hat  over  his  eyes. 
The  short  shadows  of  the  brown-coated  cypresses 
above  him  had  grown  very  long,  later  on,  and  yet  he 
had  not  passed  back  through  the  convent.  One  of  the 
monks,  in  a  faded  snufF-coloured  robe,  came  wander 
ing  out  into  the  garden,  reading  a  greasy  little  breviary. 
Suddenly  he  approached  the  bench  on  which  Row 
land  had  stretched  himself  and  paused  for  respectful 
interest.  Rowland  was  still  in  possession,  but  seated 
now  with  his  head  in  his  hands  and  his  elbows  on  his 
knees.  He  seemed  not  to  have  heard  the  sandalled 
tread  of  the  good  brother,  but  as  the  monk  remained 
watching  him  he  at  last  looked  up.  It  was  not  the  igno 
ble  old  man  who  had  admitted  him,  but  a  pale,  gaunt 
personage,  of  a  graver  and  more  ascetic  and  yet  of  a 
charitable  aspect.  Rowland's  face  might  have  borne 
for  him  the  traces  of  extreme  trouble;  something  he 
appeared  mildly  to  consider  as  he  kept  his  finger  in 
his  little  book  and  folded  his  arms  picturesquely 
across  his  breast.  Was  his  attitude,  as  he  bent  his 
sympathetic  Italian  eyes,  the  mere  accident  of  his 

316 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

civility  or  the  fruit  of  an  exquisite  spiritual  tact  ?  To 
Rowland,  however  this  might  have  been,  it  appeared 
a  sort  of  offer  of  ready  intelligence.  He  rose  and 
approached  the  monk,  laying  his  hand  on  his  arm. 

"My  brother/'  he  said,  "did  you  ever  see  the 
Devil  in  person  ?" 

The  frate  gazed  gravely  and  crossed  himself. 
"Heaven  forbid,  my  son!" 

"He  was  here,"  Rowland  went  on,  "here  in  this 
lovely  garden,  as  he  was  once  in  Paradise,  half  an 
hour  ago.  But  have  no  fear;  I  drove  him  out."  And 
he  stooped  and  picked  up  his  hat,  which  had  rolled 
away  into  a  bed  of  cyclamen  in  vague  suggestion  of 
a  positive  scrimmage. 

"You've  been  tempted,  figlio  mio?"  asked  the  friar 
tenderly. 

"Hideously!" 

"And  you  've  resisted  —  and  conquered!" 

"  I  believe  I  've  conquered." 

"The  blessed  Saint  Francis  be  praised!  It's  well 
done.  If  you  like  we  '11  offer  a  mass  for  you." 

Rowland  hesitated.    "I  'm  not  of  your  faith." 

The  frate  smiled  with  dignity.  "That's  a  reason 
the  more." 

"  But  it 's  for  you  then  to  choose.  Shake  hands  with 
me,"  Rowland  added;  "that  will  do  as  well;  and 
suffer  me  as  I  go  out  to  stop  a  moment  in  your  chapel." 

They  shook  hands  and  separated.  The  frate  crossed 
himself,  opened  his  book  and  wandered  away  in  relief 
against  the  western  sky.  Rowland  passed  back  into 
the  convent  and  paused  long  enough  in  the  chapel  to 
look  for  the  alms-box.  He  had  had  what  is  vulgarly 

31? 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

called  a  great  scare;  he  believed  very  poignantly,  for 
the  time,  in  Beelzebub  and  felt^an  irresistible  need  to 
subscribe  to  any  institution  that  might  engage  to  keep 
him  at  a  distance. 

The  next  day  he  returned  to  Rome  and  the  day 
after  that  went  in  search  of  Roderick.  He  found  him 
on  the  Pincian  with  his  back  turned  to  the  crowd 
and  his  eyes  to  the  beauty  of  the  sunset.  "  I  went  to 
Florence,"  he  said,  "and  I  thought  of  going  further; 
but  I  came  back  on  purpose  to  give  you  another  piece 
of  advice.  You  decline  decidedly  to  leave  Rome  ?" 

"Oh,  my  boy,  rather!" 

"  The  only  chance  I  then  see  of  a  revival  of  your 
sense  of  responsibility  to  —  to  those  various  sacred 
things  you  've  forgotten  is  in  sending  for  your  mother 
to  join  you  here." 

Roderick  stared.    "For  my  mother?" 

"For  your  mother  —  and  for  Miss  Garland." 

Roderick  still  stared;  and  then,  slowly  and  faintly, 
his  face  flushed.  "  For  Mary  Garland  —  for  my 
mother  ?"  he  repeated.  "Send  for  them  ?" 

"Answer  me  now  a  question,"  Rowland  simply 
pursued,  "which  I  've  long  forborne,  out  of  delicacy, 
to  ask  you.  Your  engagement  still  holds  ?" 

"'Holds'  ?"  Roderick  glared.    "Holds  what  ?" 

"Well,  some  residuum  of  what  it  originally  did. 
If  you  were  to  see  your  intended  you  would  perhaps 
be  able  to  judge." 

Roderick  thought.  "Do  you  mean  by  that  that  if 
you  see  her  you  may  be  better  able  to  squash  me?" 

Rowland  winced  at  this  —  he  flushed;  but  he  bore 
up.  "  I  should  in  the  light  of  that  speech,  even  if  I 

318 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

had  n't  already,  as  it  seems  to  me,  other  lights,  regard 
you  as  a  very  sick  man.  I  can't  imagine  that  if  Miss 
Garland  knew  how  sick  she  should  n't  at  once  feel 
that  her  place  is  at  your  side." 

Roderick  looked  at  him  for  some  time  darkly  and 
askance.  "Is  there  more  in  this  than  meets  the  eye  ?" 

"More  —  ?" 

"  I  mean  is  it  a  deeper  scheme  than  my  poor  wit  can 
fathom?" 

Rowland  had  come  back  to  Rome  with  his  patience 
reinstated,  but  these  words  gave  it  again  a  mortal 
chill.  "Heaven  forgive  you!"  he  none  the  less  reso 
lutely  answered.  "My  idea  shouldn't  surely  be 
beyond  your  comprehension  —  though  it  ought,  I 
think,  to  be  beyond  your  suspicion.  I  've  tried  to 
befriend  you,  to  help  you,  to  inspire  you  with  con 
fidence,  and  I  've  failed.  I  took  you  from  your  mother 
and  that  young  lady,  and  it  seems  to  me  my  duty  to 
restore  you  to  their  hands.  That 's  all  I  have  to  say." 

He  was  going,  but  Roderick  forcibly  detained  him. 
It  would  have  been  but  a  rough  way  of  expressing 
the  case  to  say  that  one  could  never  know  what  par 
ticular  reaction  any  touch  of  that  young  man  would 
produce.  It  had  happened  more  than  once  that  when 
deservedly  hit  hard  he  had  received  the  blow  with 
a  noble  mildness.  On  the  other  hand  he  had  often 
resented  the  lightest  taps.  The  secondary  effect  of 
Rowland's  present  admonition  seemed  reassuring. 
"I  beg  you  to  wait,"  he  said,  "to  forgive  that  shabby 
speech  and  to  let  me  think  it  over."  And  he  walked 
up  and  down  and  publicly  considered.  At  last  he 
stopped;  the  reign  of  all  reason  was  in  his  face.  It 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  like  the  sudden  light  of  a  golden  age  to  come. 
"How  strange  it  is  that  the  simplest  arrangements 
are  the  last  to  suggest  themselves!"  And  he  broke 
into  easy  laughter.  "To  see  Mary  Garland  's  just 
what  I  want.  And  my  mother  —  my  mother  can't 
hurt  me  now!" 

"You'll  write  then?" 

"  I  '11  cable.  They  must  come  at  whatever  cost. 
Striker  can  arrange  it  all  for  them." 

In  a  couple  of  days  he  told  Rowland  that  he  had 
received  a  telegraphic  answer  to  his  message,  inform 
ing  him  that  the  two  ladies  were  to  sail  immediately 
for  Leghorn  in  one  of  the  small  steamers  then  plying 
between  that  port  and  NewT  York.  They  would 
arrive  therefore  in  less  than  a  month.  Rowland 
passed  this  month  of  expectation  in  no  great  riot  of 
relief.  His  suggestion  had  had  its  source  in  the  deep 
est  places  of  his  charity;  but  there  was  something 
intolerable  in  the  thought  of  the  pain  to  which  the 
possible  event  might  subject  creatures  so  little  fore 
armed.  They  had  scraped  together  their  scanty  funds 
and  embarked  at  twenty-four  hours'  notice  upon  the 
dreadful  sea,  only  to  be  handed  over  at  the  end  to  an 
element  still  more  capable  of  betraying  them.  He 
could  but  promise  himself  to  be  their  stubborn  even 
if  disdained  support.  Preoccupied  as  he  was,  he 
could  still  observe  how  expectation,  with  Roderick, 
took  a  form  which  seemed  singular  even  among  his 
characteristic  singularities.  If  redemption  —  the  bril 
liant  youth  appeared  to  reason  —  was  to  arrive  with 
his  mother  and  his  affianced  bride,  these  last  mo 
ments  of  error  should  be  worth  redeeming.  He  only 

320 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

idled,  but  he  idled  with  intensity.  He  laughed  and 
whistled  and  went  often  to  Mrs.  Light's;  though 
Rowland  could  but  wonder  to  what  issue  events  had 
brought  his  relations  with  Christina.  The  month 
ebbed  away,  and  our  friend  daily  expected  to  learn 
that  he  had  gone  to  Leghorn  to  meet  the  ship.  No 
such  report  came,  however,  and  late  one  evening,  not 
having  seen  him  for  three  or  four  days,  he  stopped  at 
his  lodging  to  make  sure  of  his  absence.  A  cab  was 
standing  in  the  street,  but  as  it  was  a  couple  of  doors 
off  he  hardly  heeded  it.  The  hall  at  the  foot  of  the 
staircase  was  dark,  like  most  Roman  halls,  and  he 
paused  in  the  open  doorway  on  hearing  the  advancing 
footstep  of  a  person  with  whom  he  wished  to  avoid 
a  collision.  While  he  did  so  he  heard  another  footstep 
behind  him  and,  turning  round,  found  that  Roderick 
himself  had  just  overtaken  him.  At  the  same  moment 
a  woman's  figure  advanced  from  within,  into  the  light 
of  the  street-lamp,  and  a  face,  half  startled,  looked  at 
him  out  of  the  darkness.  He  gave  a  cry  —  it  was  the 
face  of  Mary  Garland.  Her  attention  flew  past  him 
to  Roderick,  and  in  a  second  a  startled  exclamation 
broke  from  her  own  lips.  It  made  him  turn  again, 
turn  to  see  Roderick  stand  there  strange  and  pale, 
apparently  trying  to  speak,  yet  producing  no  sound. 
His  lips  were  parted  and  his  attitude  foolish,  the 
attitude,  unmistakeably,  of  a  man  who  has  drunk  too 
much.  Then  Rowland's  eyes  met  Miss  Garland's 
again,  and  her  own,  which  had  rested  a  moment  on 
Roderick's  were  formidable. 


XVII 

How  it  occurred  that  Roderick  had  failed  to  be 
at  Leghorn  at  the  moment  of  his  mother's  arrival 
was  never  to  be  clearly  set  forth;  for  he  undertook 
at  no  moment  any  elaborate  explanation  of  his  fault. 
He  never  indulged  in  professions  (touching  per 
sonal  conduct)  as  to  the  future,  or  in  remorse  as  to 
the  past;  and  as  he  would  have  asked  no  praise 
if  he  had  travelled  night  and  day  to  embrace  Mrs. 
Hudson  as  she  set  foot  on  shore,  he  made  (in  Rowland's 
presence  at  least)  no  apology  for  having  left  her  to 
come  in  search  of  him.  It  was  to  be  said  that,  thanks 
to  an  unprecedented  fine  season,  the  voyage  of  the 
two  ladies  had  been  surprisingly  rapid,  and  that, 
according  to  common  probabilities,  if  Roderick  had 
left  Rome  on  the  morrow  (as  he  declared  that  he 
had  intended)  he  would  still  have  had  a  day  or  two 
of  waiting  at  Leghorn.  Rowland's  silent  inference 
was  that  Christina  Light  had  beguiled  him  into  let 
ting  the  time  slip,  and  it  was  accompanied  with  a 
tacit  enquiry  as  to  the  degree  of  her  direct  malice. 
Her  interesting  friend  had  told  her,  presumably, 
that  his  mother  and  his  cousin  were  about  to  arrive; 
and  it  was  pertinent  to  remember  hereupon  that 
she  was  a  person  of  wayward  motions.  Rowland 
possessed  himself  more  easily  meanwhile  of  the 
recent  history  of  the  two  troubled  pilgrims.  Mary 

322 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Garland's  wish,  at  Leghorn,  on  finding  they  were 
left  to  their  own  devices,  had  been  to  telegraph  to 
Roderick  and  await  an  answer,  for  she  was  not 
unaware  that  they  had  rather  stolen  a  march.  But 
Mrs.  Hudson's  maternal  heart  had  taken  the  alarm. 
Roderick's  sending  for  them  at  all  was,  to  her  im 
agination,  a  confession  of  some  pernicious  ill,  some 
visitation,  probably,  of  malignant  disease,  and  his 
not  being  at  Leghorn  a  proof  of  the  worst;  an  hour's 
delay  was  therefore  cruel  both  to  herself  and  to  him. 
She  insisted  on  immediate  departure,  and,  unversed 
as  they  were  in  strange  tongues  and  systems,  they 
had  somehow  floundered  along.  Reaching  Rome 
late  in  the  evening  and  knowing  nothing  of  inns, 
they  had  got  into  a  cab  and  proceeded  to  Roderick's 
lodging.  At  the  door  poor  Mrs.  Hudson's  trepida 
tion  had  overcome  her,  and  she  had  sat  paralysed 
and  weeping  in  the  vehicle.  Mary  had  bravely  gone 
in,  groped  her  way  up  the  dusky  staircase,  gained 
Roderick's  door  and,  with  the  assistance  of  such 
acquaintance  with  the  local  idiom  as  she  had  culled 
from  a  phrase-book  during  the  calm  hours  of  the 
voyage,  learned  from  the  old  woman  who  had  her 
cousin's  household  economy  in  charge  that  he  was 
in  the  best  of  health  and  spirits  and  had  gone  forth 
a  few  hours  before,  his  hat  on  his  ear,  per  diver- 
tirsi. 

These  things  Rowland  learned  during  a  visit 
paid  the  ladies  the  second  evening  of  their  stay. 
Mrs.  Hudson  spoke  of  them  with  great  abundance 
and  repetition  and  with  an  air  of  clinging  confidence 
which  told  her  visitor  that  he  was  now  enshrined 

323 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

in  her  innermost  faith.  But  her  fright  was  over, 
though  she  was  still  catching  her  breath  a  little,  like 
a  person  dragged  ashore  out  of  waters  uncomfort 
ably  deep.  She  was  exquisitely  astray  about  every 
thing,  and  appealed  more  than  ever  to  correction 
and  precaution.  Before  her  companion  he  was  dis 
tinctly  conscious  that  he  quaked.  He  wondered 
extremely  what  was  going  on  in  this  young  lady's 
mind,  what  had  been  her  silent  commentary  on  the 
incidents  of  the  night  before.  He  wondered  all  the 
more  because  he  immediately  perceived  that  she 
was  now  a  person  changed,  and  changed  not  to  her 
disfigurement.  She  was  older,  easier,  lighter;  she 
had,  as  would  have  been  said  in  Rome,  more  form. 
She  had  thus,  he  made  out,  more  expression,  facial 
and  other,  and  it  was  beautifully  as  if  this  expres 
sion  had  been  accumulating  all  the  while,  lacking 
on  the  scene  of  her  life  any  channel  to  waste  itself. 
It  was  like  something  she  had  been  working  at  in 
the  long  days  of  home,  an  exquisite  embroidery 
or  a  careful  compilation,  and  she  now  presented  the 
whole  wealth  of  it  as  a  kind  of  pious  offering.  Row 
land  felt  almost  instantly — he  could  hardly  have  said 
why;  it  was  in  her  voice,  in  her  tone,  in  the  air —  that 
a  different  principle  governed  her  manner  of  regarding 
him.  She  built  on  him  now  absolutely;  whether  or  no 
she  liked  him  she  believed  in  his  solidity.  He  felt  that 
during  the  coming  weeks  he  should  need  to  be  solid. 
Mrs.  Hudson  was  at  one  of  the  smaller  hotels,  and 
her  sitting-room  was  frugally  lighted  by  a  couple 
of  candles.  He  made  the  most  of  this  dim  illumina 
tion  for  some  quest  of  the  afterglow  of  that  fright- 

324 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ened  flash  from  Mary's  eyes  the  night  before.  It 
had  been  but  a  flash,  for  what  provoked  it  had 
instantly  vanished.  Rowland,  on  this  occasion,  see 
ing  the  high  delinquent  instantly  measure  his  peril, 
had  mutely  applauded  the  art  of  his  recovery.  If 
he  had  been  drinking  the  quick  consciousness  sobered 
him;  he  had  collected  his  wits  with  inimitable  grace. 
The  next  moment,  with  a  ringing  jovial  cry,  he  was 
folding  the  girl  in  his  arms,  and  the  next  after  he 
was  beside  his  mother's  cab,  half  smothered  in  her 
sobs  and  caresses.  Rowland  had  recommended  an 
hotel  close  at  hand  and  had  then  discreetly  retired. 
Roderick  was  at  that  time  "playing  up"  to  them 
all  brilliantly,  and  Mary  Garland's  face  was  serene. 
It  was  clear  now,  twenty-four  hours  later;  but  her 
vision  had  none  the  less  flared  there  for  its  minute. 
What  had  become  of  it  ?  It  had  dropped  down  deep 
into  her  memory  and  was  lying  there  for  the  pre 
sent  in  the  shade.  From  one  day  to  another, 
Rowland  yet  said  to  himself,  it  would  hold  up  its 
head,  would  begin  to  watch  and  listen,  would  rise 
again  and  confront  him.  Meanwhile  he  made  the 
most  of  the  hours  —  he  passed  them  in  the  con 
sciousness  of  being  near  her.  The  two  ladies  had 
passed  the  day  indoors,  resting,  reacting,  recover 
ing.  The  younger,  Rowland  suspected,  was  not  quite 
so  spent  as  she  suffered  it  to  be  assumed.  She  had 
remained  with  Mrs.  Hudson  to  attend  to  her  per 
sonal  wants,  which  the  latter  seemed  to  think,  now 
that  she  was  in  a  foreign  land  with  a  southern  cli 
mate  and  a  Catholic  religion,  would  forthwith  be 
come  very  complex  and  formidable,  though  as  yet 

325 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

they  had  simply  resolved  themselves  into  a  desire 
for  a  great  deal  of  tea  and  for  a  certain  extremely 
familiar  old  black  and  white  shawl  across  her  feet 
as  she  lay  on  the  sofa.  But  the  sense  of  novelty  was 
evidently  strong  upon  Mary  and  the  light  of  ex 
pectation  in  her  eye.  She  was  restless  and  excited; 
she  moved  about  the  room  and  went  often  to  the 
window;  she  took  everything  in;  she  watched  the 
Italian  servants  as  they  came  and  went;  she  had 
already  had  a  long  colloquy  with  the  French  cham 
bermaid,  who  had  published  her  views  on  the  Ro 
man  question;  she  noted  the  small  differences  in 
the  furniture,  in  the  cookery,  in  the  sounds  that 
came  in  from  the  street.  She  might  have  been  an 
exceptionally  fine  specimen-islander  of  an  unclassed 
group,  brought  home  by  a  great  navigator  and  treat 
able  as  yet  mainly  by  beads  and  comfits.  Rowland 
was  sure  she  observed  to  good  purpose,  that  she 
only  needed  opportunity,  and  that  she  would  gather 
impressions  in  clusters  as  thick  as  the  purple  bunches 
of  a  vintage.  He  wished  immensely  he  might  have 
a  hand  in  the  work;  he  wished  he  might  show  her 
Rome.  That  of  course  would  be  Roderick's  office, 
but  he  promised  himself  at  least  to  take  advantage 
of  off-hours. 

"It  behoves  you  to  appreciate  your  good  fortune, 
you  know,"  he  permitted  himself  to  say.  "To  be 
young  and  eager,  and  yet  old  enough  and  wise  enough 
to  discriminate  and  reflect,  and  to  come  to  Italy  for 
the  first  time  —  that 's  one  of  the  greatest  pleasures 
life  has  to  offer.  It 's  but  right  to  remind  you  of  it, 
so  that  you  may  make  the  most  of  your  chances  and 

326 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

not  accuse  yourself  later  of  having  wasted  the  pre 
cious  season." 

Mary  looked  at  him  with  her  large  smile  and  went 
to  the  window  again.  "I  expect  to  enjoy  it.  Don't 
be  afraid;  I  'm  not  wasteful." 

"I'm  afraid  we're  not  so  very  qualified,  you 
know,"  said  Mrs.  Hudson.  "We're  told  that  you 
must  know  so  much,  that  you  must  have  read  so 
many  books.  Our  taste  has  not  highly  been  culti 
vated.  When  I  was  a  young  lady  at  school  I  remem 
ber  I  had  a  medal  with  a  pink  ribbon  for  'pro 
ficiency  in  ancient  history'  —  the  seven  kings,  or  is 
it  the  seven  hills  ?  and  Quintus  Curtius  and  Julius 
Caesar,  and  —  and  that  period,  you  know.  I  be 
lieve  I  have  my  medal  somewhere  in  a  drawer  now, 
but  I  've  forgotten  all  about  the  kings.  After  Rod 
erick  came  to  Italy  we  tried  to  pursue  a  course.  Last 
winter  Mary  used  to  read  *  Corinne  '  to  me  in  the 
evenings,  and  in  the  mornings  she  used  to  read  an 
other  book  to  herself.  What  was  it,  Mary,  that  book 
that  was  so  long,  you  know  —  in  fifteen  volumes  ?" 

"It  was  Sismondi's  'Italian  Republics,'"  Mary 
honestly  answered. 

Rowland  showed,  for  all  his  precautions,  an  amuse 
ment;  whereat  the  girl  coloured.  "And  did  you 
push  quite  through  ?" 

"Yes,  and  began  another  —  a  shorter  one  — 
Roscoe's  'Leo  the  Tenth."1 

"Did  you  find  them  interesting?" 

"Oh  yes." 

"Do  you  like  history?" 

"Some  of  it." 

327 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"That's  a  woman's  answer!  And  do  you  like 
art?" 

She  paused  a  moment.  "  I  think  I  've  never  seen 
any — except  Roderick's.  Of  course  I  've  liked  that.''' 

"Ah,  that  proves  nothing!"  Rowland  freely  de 
clared.  "You  must  try  other  people's." 

"  I  'm  sure  she  '11  only  want  to  try,"  Mrs.  Hudson 
interposed.  "  You  've  great  advantages  now,  my  dear, 
with  Roderick  and  Mr.  Mallet,"  she  said  to  Mary. 
"  No  young  lady  can  ever  have  had  greater.  You  come 
straight  to  the  highest  authorities.  Roderick,  I  sup 
pose,  will  show  you  the  practice  of  art,  and  Mr.  Mallet, 
perhaps,  if  he  will  be  so  good,  will  show  you  the  theory. 
As  an  artist's  wife  you  ought  to  know  something  at 
least  about  that." 

"One  learns  a  good  deal  about  it  here  by  simply 
living  one's  life,"  said  Rowland;  "by  going  and 
coming  about  one's  daily  avocations." 

"Dear,  dear,  how  wonderful  that  we  should  be 
here  in  the  midst  of  it!"  murmured  Mrs.  Hudson. 
"To  think  of  art  being  out  there  in  the  streets!  We 
did  n't  see  much  of  it  last  evening  as  we  drove  from 
the  station.  But  the  streets  were  so  dark,  and  we 
should  n't  have  known,  at  any  rate,  where  to  look. 
Now,  however,  we  're  quite  ourselves,  and  Mary,  I 
think,  is  really  enjoying  the  revulsion." 

"Oh,  I  'm  all  right,"  this  young  woman  replied; 
and  she  wandered  again  to  the  window,  as  if  the  very 
largeness  of  their  case  defied  expansion. 

Roderick  came  in  at  this  moment  and  kissed  his 
mother,  and  then  went  over  and  joined  her  companion. 
Rowland  sat  wth  Mrs.  Hudson,  who  evidently  had  a 

328 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

word  she  deemed  important  for  his  private  ear.    She 
followed  her  son  with  intensely  earnest  eyes. 

"I  wish  to  tell  you,  sir,"  she  said,  "how  deeply 
indebted,  how  very  grateful,  what  a  happy  mother  I 
am!  I  feel  I  owe  you  all  of  it.  To  find  my  poor  boy 
so  handsome,  so  prosperous,  so  elegant,  so  famous  — 
and  ever  to  have  doubted  of  you!  What  must  you 
think  of  me  ?  You  're  our  guardian  angel;  it 's  what 
Mary  and  I  call  you." 

Rowland  felt  himself  wear  in  answer  to  this  speech 
an  anxiously  impenetrable  face.  He  could  only  mur 
mur  that  he  was  glad  she  found  Roderick  looking 
well.  He  had  of  course  promptly  asked  himself  if  it 
would  n't  be  his  best  line  to  give  her  a  word  of  warning 
—  turn  the  handle  of  the  door  through  which,  later 
on,  disappointment  and  its  train  might  enter.  But  he 
had  determined  to  say  nothing  and  simply  to  wait  for 
Roderick  to  find  effective  inspiration  in  the  eyes  now 
so  deeply  resting  on  him.  It  was  even  to  be  supposed 
he  was  actually  looking  for  it;  he  remained  some 
time  at  the  window  with  his  cousin.  But  at  last  he 
turned  away  and  came  over  to  the  fire  with  the  first 
fine  cloud  already  on  his  brightness.  In  what  wrong 
place  had  the  poor  girl  happened  to  touch  him  ?  She 
presently  followed  him,  and  for  an  instant  Rowland 
observed  her  watch  him  as  if  he  struck  her  as  strange. 
"  Strange  enough,"  thought  their  companion, "  he  may 
seem  to  her  if  he  will!"  Roderick  looked  at  his  friend 
with  a  vague  peremptory  pressure,  a  sign  to  him  that 
he  too  must  really  mount  to  the  breach.  "Heaven 
help  us  all!"  Rowland  tacitly  groaned;  "are  they 
already  giving  on  his  nerves  ?" 

329 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"To-morrow,  of  course,  we  must  begin  to  put  you 
through  the  mill,"  Roderick  said  to  his  mother.  "And 
be  it  hereby  known  to  Mallet  that  we  count  upon  him 
to  turn  the  wheel." 

"I  will  do  as  you  please,  my  son,"  said  Mrs.  Hud 
son.  "So  long  as  I  have  you  with  me  I  don't  care 
where  I  go.  We  must  not  take  up  too  much  of  Mr. 
Mallet's  time." 

"His  time's  inexhaustible;  he  has  nothing  under 
the  sun  to  do.  Can  you  dream,  Rowland,  of  anything 
more  delirious  than  our  company  ?  If  you  had  seen 
the  big  hole  I  've  been  making  in  his  life!  Where  will 
you  go  first  ?  You  have  your  choice  —  from  the  Scala 
Santa  to  the  Cloaca  Maxima." 

"Let  us  take  things  in  order,"  said  Rowland.  "We 
will  go  first  to  Saint  Peter's  church.  Miss  Garland, 
I  hope  you  're  impatient  to  see  Saint  Peter's  church." 

"I  should  like  to  go  first  to  Roderick's  studio," 
Miss  Garland  declared. 

"  It 's  a  very  horrid,  nasty,  depressing  place,  my 
studio,"  said  Roderick.  "But  do  whatever  in  the 
wide  world  you  like." 

"  Yes,  we  must  see  your  beautiful  things  before  we 
can  look  contentedly  at  anything  else,"  said  Mrs. 
Hudson. 

"I  have  no  beautiful  things,"  said  Roderick.  "You 
may  see  a  dozen  ghosts  of  dead  dreams.  What  makes 
you  look  so  —  ?  But  how  is  it  you  do  look  ?" 

This  enquiry  was  abruptly  addressed  to  his  mother, 
who  in  response  glanced  appealingly  at  Mary,  and 
raised  a  startled  hand  to  her  smooth  hair. 

"No,  it 's  your  dear  old  face.   What  has  come  over 

330 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

it  in  my  absence  ?  It  has  got  something  in  it,  you 
know,"  he  said,  with  quite  a  flicker  of  interest,  to 
Rowland. 

"It  must  have  in  it  all  the  fond  prayers  she  has 
been  putting  up  for  you,"  Mary  gravely  suggested. 

"Oh,  I  don't  suppose  it  represents  the  trace  of 
orgies!  But  whatever  it  is,  mammy,  it's  a  great 
improvement;  it  makes  you  a  very  good  face  —  very 
interesting,  very  decent,  very  solemn.  It  has  two  or 
three  rare  tragic  lines  in  it;  something  might  be  done 
with  it."  And  Roderick  held  one  of  the  candles  near 
the  poor  lady's  head. 

She  was  covered  with  confusion.  "My  son,  my 
son,"  she  said  with  dignity, "  I  don't  understand  you." 

In  a  flash  all  his  old  alacrity  had  come  to  him.  "  I 
suppose  a  man  may  admire  his  own  lovely  mother! 
If  you  please,  ma'am,  you  '11  sit  to  me  for  that  beau 
tiful  head.  I  see  it,  I  see  it!  I  '11  make  something  that 
a  queen  can't  get  done  for  her." 

Rowland  respectfully  urged  her  to  assent;  he  saw 
Roderick  was  in  the  vein  and  he  calculated  on  the  spot, 
with  one  of  his  own  odd  flights,  that  this  might  lead 
to  the  masterpiece  of  the  young  sculptor's  life.  It  was 
such  a  chance  for  "sincerity"  -the  very  sincerity, 
immortal  now,  of  the  early  Tuscans.  Mrs.  Hudson 
gave  her  promise  at  last,  after  many  inarticulate  pro 
tests  and  a  fond  request  that  she  might  be  allowed  to 
keep  her  knitting. 

Rowland  returned,  the  next  day,  with  plenty  of 
zeal  for  the  part  his  friend  had  assigned  him.  It  had 
been  arranged  that  they  should  drive  to  Saint  Peter's, 
and  Roderick,  whose  sky  had  again  cleared,  watched 

331 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  mother,  in  the  carriage,  on  the  way,  with  a  fine 
mixture  of  filial  and  professional  interest.  Mrs. 
Hudson  looked  up  ruefully  at  the  high,  sinister  houses 
and  grasped  the  side  of  the  barouche  as  if  she  were 
launched  in  deep  seas.  Rowland  sat  opposite  to  Miss 
Garland,  who  appeared  for  the  time  totally  oblivious 
of  her  companions.  From  the  moment  the  carriage 
left  the  hotel  she  sat  gazing  wide-eyed  and  absorbed 
at  the  objects  about  them.  If  Rowland  had  felt  more 
reckless  he  might  have  made  a  joke,  or  even  a  greater 
affair,  of  the  dead  weight  of  this  tribute  to  the  magic  of 
Rome,  the  most  candid,  in  a  manner,  that  he  had  ever 
seen  paid.  From  time  to  time  he  told  her  the  name  of 
a  place  or  a  building,  and  she  nodded  without  looking 
at  him.  When  they  emerged  into  the  great  square 
between  Bernini's  colonnades  she  laid  her  hand  on 
Mrs.  Hudson's  arm  and  sank  back  in  the  carriage, 
staring  up  at  the  golden  immensities.  Within  the  high 
doors  at  last  Roderick  gave  his  arm  to  his  mother, 
and  Rowland  constituted  himself  the  guide  of  the 
younger  lady.  He  walked  with  her  slowly  everywhere, 
making  the  entire  circuit  and  telling  her  all  he  knew, 
trying  to  tell  her  all  he  felt.  This  was  no  small  matter, 
but  she  listened  attentively,  keeping  her  eyes  on  the 
dome.  For  Rowland  himself  it  had  never  had  such 
consecrating  power;  even,  as  might  be,  of  the  hushed 
human  passions  beneath  it.  He  felt,  in  this  promotion 
of  its  effect,  almost  as  if  he  had  designed  it  and  had  a 
right  to  be  proud  of  it.  He  left  Mary  Garland  awhile 
on  the  steps  of  the  choir,  where  she  had  seated  herself 
to  rest,  and  went  to  join  their  companions.  Mrs. 
Hudson  was  watching  a  circle  of  tattered  contadim 

332 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

kneel  before  the  image  of  Saint  Peter.  The  fashion  of 
their  tatters  fascinated  her;  she  stood  gazing  at  them 
in  terrified  pity  and  could  be  induced  to  look  at  al 
most  nothing  else.  Rowland  went  back  to  Mary  and 
sat  down  beside  her. 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  of  Europe?"  he  ami 
cably  asked. 

"I  think  it 's  dreadful!"  she  presently  brought  out. 

"Dreadful?" 

"  I  feel  so  strangely  —  I  could  almost  cry." 

"How  is  it  then  you  feel  ?" 

"  So  sorry  for  the  poor  little  past  that  seems  to  have 
died  here  in  my  heart  in  an  hour!" 

"  But  surely  you  're  pleased  —  you  're  interested." 

"I  'm  overwhelmed.  Here  in  a  single  hour  every 
thing  's  changed.  It 's  as  if  a  wall  somewhere  about 
me  had  been  knocked  down  at  a  stroke.  Before  me 
lies  an  immense  new  world,  and  it  makes  the  old  one, 
the  little  narrow  familiar  conceited  one  I  've  always 
known,  seem  pitiful." 

"  But  you  did  n't  come  to  Rome  to  walk  backward, 
to  keep  your  eyes  fastened  on  what  you  left.  Forget 
it,  turn  away  from  it,  give  yourself  up  to  this." 

"  I  should  like  nothing  better.  But  as  I  sat  here  just 
now,  looking  up  at  that  golden  mist  in  the  dome,  I 
seemed  to  see  in  it  the  vague  jhapes  of  certain  people 
and  things  at  home.  To  enjoy  so  much  beauty  and 
wonder  is  to  break  with  the  past  —  I  mean  with  one's 
poor  old  own.  And  breaking  's  a  pain." 

"  Don't  mind  the  pain,  and  it  will  cease  to  trouble 
you.  Enjoy,  enjoy;  it 's  your  duty.  Yours  especially." 

"Why  mine  especially?"  the  girl  asked. 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Because  I'm  so  convinced  that  you 've  a  mind 
formed  to  do  justice  to  everything  interesting  and 
beautiful.  You  're  extremely  intelligent." 

"You  don't  know,"  she  simply  said. 

"In  that  matter  one  feels.  I  really  think  I  know 
better  than  you.  I  don't  want  to  seem  patronising, 
but  I  see  in  you  a  capital  subject  for  development. 
Give  yourself  the  best  company,  trust  yourself,  let 
yourself  go." 

She  looked  away  from  him  for  some  moments, 
down  the  gorgeous  vista  of  the  great  church.  "  But 
what  you  say,"  she  said  at  last,  "  means  change" 

"Change  for  the  better,"  Rowland  insisted. 

"How  can  one  tell  ?  As  one  stands  one  knows  the 
worst.  It  seems  to  me  very  frightful  to  develop,"  she 
went  on. 

"One  is  in  for  it  in  one  way  or  another,  and  one 
might  as  well  do  it  with  a  good  grace  as  with  a  bad. 
Since  one  can't  escape  life  it 's  better  to  take  it  by  the 
hand." 

"Is  this  what  you  call  life?"  she  presently  asked. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  'this*  ?" 

"What 's  around  us  —  all  this  splendour,  all  Rome; 
pictures,  ruins,  statues,  beggars,  monks." 

"  It 's  not  all  of  it,  but  it 's  a  large  part  of  it.  All 
these  things  are  impregnated  with  life;  they  're  the 
results  of  an  immemorial,  a  complex  and  accumu 
lated,  civilisation." 

"  'Immemorial,  complex,  accumulated'  —  ah,  those 
are  words  I  'm  afraid  of." 

"There  may  be  better  ones  for  what  I  mean," 
Rowland  smiled;  "but  I  don't  believe  it  's  in  you  to 

334 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

be  really  afraid  of  anything.  Don't  at  any  rate  con 
clude  on  that  point  just  yet.  Wait  till  you  've  tested 
your  courage.  While  you  wait  you  '11  see  an  immense 
number  of  very  beautiful  things  —  things  that  you  're 
made  to  understand.  They  won't  leave  you  as  they 
found  you;  then  you  can  judge.  Don't  tell  me  I 
know  nothing  about  your  understanding.  I  've  a  right 
to  count  upon  it." 

Mary  gazed  a  while  aloft  into  the  dome.  "I  'm  not 
sure  I  understand  that."  And  she  nodded  upward. 

"  I  hope  at  least  that  at  a  cursory  glance  it  pleases 
you.  You  need  n't  be  afraid  to  tell  the  truth.  What 
strikes  some  people,"  Rowland  said,  "  is  that  it 's  so 
disconcertingly  small." 

"Oh,  it 's  large  enough;  it  will  do  for  me.  There 
are  things  in  Rome,  then,"  she  added  in  a  moment, 
turning  and  looking  at  him,  "that  are  quite  supremely 
beautiful  ?" 

"Lots  of  them." 

"Some  of  the  most  beautiful  things  in  the  world  ?" 

"  Unquestionably." 

"What  are  they  ?  which  things  have  most  beauty  ?" 

"That's  according  to  taste.  I  should  say  the 
mtique  sculpture." 

"How  long  will  it  take  to  see  it  all;  to  know  at 
;ast  something  about  it  ?" 

"  You  can  see  it  all,  as  far  as  mere  seeing  goes,  in 
a  fortnight.  But  to  know  it  is  a  thing  for  one's  leisure. 
The  more  time  you  spend  with  it  the  more  you  care 
for  it."  After  a  moment's  hesitation  he  went  on: 
"Why  should  you  grudge  time?  It's  all  in  your 
way,  since  you  're  to  be  an  artist's  wife." 

335 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  I  've  thought  of  that,"  she  said.  "It  may  be 
that  I  shall  always  live  here  —  among  the  most  beau 
tiful  things  in  the  world." 

"  Very  possibly.  I  should  like  to  see  you  ten 
years  hence." 

"I  dare  say  that  many  things  will  by  that  time 
have  come  to  me,  and  I  certainly  hope  it.  But  I  'm 
nevertheless  sure — !" 

"Of  what?"  he  asked  as  she  paused. 

"That  for  the  most  part  I  shall  be  quite  stupidly 
unaltered  by  them.  I  ask  nothing  better  than  to  be 
lieve  the  fine  things  you  say  about  my  understand 
ing,  but  even  if  they  're  true  it  won't  matter.  I  shall 
be  what  I  was  made,  what  I  am  now  —  a  young 
woman  from  the  very  heart  of  New  England.  The 
fruit  of  a  civilisation  as  different  as  possible  from 
this  so  strangely-mixed  Roman." 

"  I  'm  delighted  to  hear  it.  The  heart  of  New  Eng 
land  's  an  excellent  basis." 

"Perhaps  if  you  show  me  anything  more  you  '11 
grow  rather  tired  of  my  basis.  Therefore  I  warn 
you." 

"I  'm  not  frightened.  I  should  like  extremely  to 
make  a  request  of  you.  Be  what  you  are,  what  you 
like,  what  you  must  —  be  your  very  worst.  But  do, 
sometimes,  as  I  tell  you." 

If  Rowland  was  not  frightened  neither  perhaps 
was  his  companion;  but  she  brought  their  talk  to 
an  end  as  if  not  to  make  this  promise.  She  proposed 
they  should  join  the  others. 

Mrs.  Hudson  spoke  under  her  breath;  she  could 
not  be  accused  of  the  want  of  reverence  often  at- 

336 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tributed  to  the  crude  heretic  in  the  great  Catholic 
temples.  "Mary  dear,"  she  whispered,  "suppose 
we  had  to  kiss  that  dreadful  brass  toe.  If  I  could 
only  have  kept  our  door-knocker  at  Northampton 
as  bright  as  that!  I  think  it 's  heathenish,  but  Rod 
erick  says  he  thinks  it 's  sublime." 

Roderick  had  evidently  grown  a  trifle  perverse. 
"  It 's  sublimer  than  anything  that  your  religion 
asks  you  to  do!" 

"Surely  our  religion  sometimes  gives  us  very 
difficult  duties,"  said  Mary. 

"The  duty  of  sitting  in  a  whitewashed  meeting 
house  and  listening  to  a  nasal  Puritan!  I  admit 
that 's  difficult.  But  it 's  not  sublime.  I  'm  speak 
ing  of  ceremonies,  of  magnificent  forms.  It 's  in  my 
line,  you  know,  to  make  much  of  magnificent  forms. 
I  think  this  a  very  interesting  case  of  a  grand  form. 
Could  n't  you  do  it  ?"  he  demanded,  looking  at  his 
cousin. 

She  looked  back  at  him  intently  and  then  shook 
her  head.  "I  think  not!" 

"Why  not?" 

"I  don't  know.    I  couldn't!" 

During  this  little  discussion  our  four  friends  were 
standing  near  the  venerable  image  of  the  genius  loci, 
and  a  squalid,  savage-looking  peasant,  a  tattered 
ruffian  of  the  most  orthodox  Italian  aspect,  had  been 
performing  his  devotions  before  it.  He  turned  away 
crossing  himself,  and  Mrs.  Hudson  gave  a  little 
shudder  of  horror. 

"After  that,"  she  murmured,  "I  suppose  he  thinks 


337 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  's  as  good  as  any  one!  And  here  's  another.  Oh, 
what  a  beautiful  person!" 

A  young  lady  had  approached  the  sacred  effigy 
after  having  wandered  away  from  a  group  of  com 
panions.  She  kissed  the  brazen  toe,  touched  it  with 
her  forehead  and,  turning  round  to  face  our  friends, 
presented  herself  to  Rowland  as  Christina  Light. 
He  took  account  of  this  indication  that  she  had  sud 
denly  begun  again  to  pratiquer  religiously,  for  it  was 
but  a  few  weeks  before  that  she  had  treated  him  to 
a  passionate  profession  of  indifference.  Had  she 
already  taken  up  the  duties  laid  down  by  decorum  for 
a  Princess  Casamassima  ?  While  Rowland  was  men 
tally  asking  these  questions  she  had  drawn  nearer  — 
she  was  moving  toward  the  great  altar.  But  at  first 
she  had  not  taken  in  our  group. 

Mary  Garland  had  been  watching  her.  "You 
told  me,"  she  said  gently  to  Rowland,  "that  Rome 
contained  some  of  the  most  beautiful  things  in  the 
world.  This  surely  is  one  of  them!" 

At  this  moment  Christina's  eye  met  Rowland's, 
and  before  giving  him  any  sign  of  recognition  she 
glanced  rapidly  at  his  companions.  She  saw  Rod 
erick,  but  without  expression  of  it;  she  looked  at 
Mrs.  Hudson,  she  looked  at  Mary  Garland.  At 
Mary  she  looked  with  attention,  with  penetration, 
from  head  to  foot,  the  slow  pace  at  which  she  ad 
vanced  making  it  possible.  The  next  thing,  as  if 
she  had  perceived  Roderick  for  the  first  time,  she 
broke  into  a  friendly,  a  radiant  smile.  In  a  moment 
he  was  at  her  side.  She  stopped,  and  he  stood  talking 
to  her;  she  continued  to  look  at  Mary. 

338 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Why,  Roderick  knows  her!"  cried  Mrs.  Hud 
son  in  an  awestruck  whisper.  "I  supposed  she  was 
some  great  princess." 

"She  is  —  almost!"  said  Rowland.  "She's  the 
most  beautiful  girl  in  Europe,  and  Roderick  has 
modelled  her." 

"'Modelled'  —  ?  Dear,  dear!"  murmured  Mrs. 
Hudson,  as  if  aghast  at  some  vision  of  a  new  free 
dom.  "What  a  very  strange  bonnet!" 

"She  has  very  strange  eyes,"  said  Mary,  turn 
ing  away. 

The  two  ladies,  with  Rowland,  took  their  way 
toward  the  door  of  the  church.  On  their  way  they 
passed  Mrs.  Light  and  the  Cavaliere,  and  Rowland 
informed  his  companions  of  the  relation  in  which 
these  personages  stood  to  Roderick's  young  lady. 

"Think  of  it,  Mary!"  said  Mrs.  Hudson.  "What 
splendid  people  he  must  know!  No  wonder  he  found 
Northampton  rather  mild." 

"I  like  the  wise  little  old  gentleman,"  said  Mary. 

"Why  do  you  call  him  wise?"  Rowland  asked, 
struck  with  the  observation. 

"Because  I  think  I  'm  learning  what  wisdom  ts." 

As  they  approached  their  egress  they  were  over 
taken  by  Roderick,  whose  interview  with  Miss  Light 
had  left  in  his  face  a  traceable  afterglow.  "  So  you  're 
acquainted  with  princesses  ?"  said  his  mother,  softly, 
as  they  passed  into  the  portico. 

"Miss  Light  isn't  a  princess!"  he  rather  dryly 
returned. 

"But  Mr.  Mallet  says  so,"  urged  Mrs.  Hudson, 
disappointed. 

339 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  I  meant  that  she  's  going  to  be,"  said  Rowland. 
"  It 's  by  no  means  certain  that  she  's  even  going 
to  be!"  Roderick  answered. 

"Ah  then,"  Rowland  laughed,  "I  give  it  up!" 


XVIII 

RODERICK  came  almost  immediately  back  to  his 
idea  that  his  mother  should  sit  to  him  at  his  studio 
for  her  portrait,  and  Rowland  ventured  to  add  another 
word  of  urgency.  If  Roderick's  idea  had  really  taken 
hold  of  him  it  was  an  immense  pity  his  inspiration 
should  be  wasted;  inspiration  had  become  in  these 
days  too  rare  a  visitor.  It  was  arranged  therefore 
that  for  the  present,  during  the  mornings,  Mrs. 
Hudson  should  place  herself  at  her  son's  service. 
This  involved  but  little  sacrifice,  for  the  good  lady's 
appetite  for  antiquities  was  diminutive  and  bird- 
like,  the  usual  round  of  galleries  and  churches  fa 
tigued  her,  and  she  was  glad  to  purchase  immunity 
from  sight-seeing  by  a  regular  afternoon  drive.  It 
became  natural  in  this  way  that  as  Mary  Garland 
had  her  mornings  free  Rowland  should  feel  it  no 
more  than  civil  to  offer  himself  as  a  guide.  He  could 
scarce  find  it  in  his  heart  to  accuse  Roderick  of  neg 
lect  of  that  function,  united  to  him  though  the  girl 
might  be  by  a  double  bond;  for  it  was  natural  that 
the  inspirations  of  a  man  of  genius  should  be  both 
capricious  and  imperious,  and  on  what  plan  had 
he  ever  started  moreover  but  on  that  of  diligence 
and  claustration  ?  Yet  he  wondered  how  Mary  felt, 
as  the  young  man's  promised  wife,  on  being  so  sum 
marily  handed  over  to  another  man  to  be  enter 
tained.  However  she  might  feel  he  was  still  certain 

341 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  should  learn  very  little  about  it.  There  had  been 
between  them  none  but  indirect  allusions  to  her  in 
tended  marriage;  and  Rowland  had  no  desire  to 
discuss  it  more  largely,  for  he  had  no  quarrel  with 
matters  as  they  stood.  They  wore  the  same  delight 
ful  aspect  through  the  lovely  month  of  May,  and 
the  ineffable  charm  of  Rome  at  that  period  seemed 
but  the  radiant  sympathy  of  nature  with  his  happy 
opportunity.  The  weather  was  divine;  each  par 
ticular  morning,  as  he  walked  from  his  lodging  to 
Mrs.  Hudson's  modest  inn,  had  a  particular  bless 
ing  on  it.  The  elder  lady  had  usually  gone  off  to  the 
studio,  and  he  found  Mary  sitting  alone  at  the  open 
window,  turning  the  leaves  of  some  book  of  artistic 
or  antiquarian  reference  that  he  had  given  her.  She 
was  always  eager,  alert,  responsive;  she  had  always 
her  large  settled  smile,  which  reminded  him  of  some 
clear  ample  "spare-room,"  some  expectant  guest- 
chamber,  as  they  said  in  New  England,  with  its 
windows  up  for  ventilation.  She  might  be  grave  by 
nature,  she  might  be  sad  by  circumstance,  she  might 
have  secret  doubts  and  pangs,  but  she  was  essen 
tially  young  and  strong  and  fresh  —  able  to  respond 
to  any  vivid  appeal.  Her  response  was  not  a  ran 
dom  chatter,  but  it  was  full  of  intention.  It  was  not 
amusement  and  sensation  she  coveted,  but  know 
ledge  —  facts  that  she  might  noiselessly  lay  away, 
piece  by  piece,  in  the  fragrant  darkness  of  her  serious 
mind,  so  that  under  this  head  at  least  she  should 
not  be  a  perfectly  portionless  bride.  She  never  merely 
pretended  to  understand;  she  let  things  go,  wTith 
her  arrested  concession,  at  the  moment;  but  she 

342 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

watched  them  on  their  way  over  the  crest  of  the  hill, 
and  when  her  attention  seemed  not  likely  to  be 
missed  it  went  hurrying  after  them  and  ran  breath 
less  at  their  side  and  begged  them  for  the  secret. 
Rowland  took  a  high  satisfaction  in  observing  that 
she  never  mistook  the  second-best  for  the  best  and 
that  when  she  stood  in  great  presences  she  recog 
nised  the  importance  of  the  occasion.  She  said  many 
things  that  he  thought  very  happy  —  that  is  if  they 
meant  certain  other  things  that  they  perhaps  did  n't, 
and  meant  all  of  those.  This  point  he  usually  tried 
to  ascertain;  but  he  was  obliged  to  proceed  cau 
tiously,  for  the  effect  of  her  so  suddenly-quickened 
vision  of  a  more  mixed  order  than  she  had  ever 
dreamt  of  was  to  make  her  see  everything  as  mixed, 
and  cross-examination,  by  that  law,  as  necessarily 
ironic.  She  wished  to  know  just  where  she  was  go 
ing  —  what  she  should  gain  or  lose.  This  was  partly 
on  account  of  the  purity  and  rigidity  of  a  mind  that 
had  not  lived  with  its  door  ajar  upon  the  high-road 
of  cosmopolite  chatter,  for  passing  phrases  to  drop 
in  and  out  at  their  pleasure,  but  that  had  none  the 
less  looked  out,  ever,  from  the  threshold,  for  any  strag 
gler  on  the  "march  of  ideas,"  any  limping  rumour 
or  broken-winged  echo  of  life,  that  would  stop  and 
be  cherished  as  a  guest.  It  was  even  more  perhaps 
because  she  was  aware  of  a  sort  of  growing  self- 
respect,  a  sense  of  devoting  her  consciousness  not  to 
her  own  ends,  but  to  those  of  another  whose  career 
would  be  high  and  splendid.  She  had  been  brought 
up  to  think  a  great  deal  of  "nature"  and  nature's 
innocent  laws;  but  now  Rowland  had  talked  to  her 

343 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ingeniously  of  the  need  of  man's  spirit  to  refine  upon 
them,  her  fresh  imagination  had  responded,  and  she 
was  following  this  mystic  clue  into  retreats  where 
the  intellectual  effort  gave  her  a  well-nigh  tragic  ten 
sion.  She  wished  to  be  very  sure,  to  take  only  the 
best,  knowing  it  to  be  the  best.  Her  desire  to  im 
prove  herself  struck  him  at  moments  as  almost  grim, 
and  not  the  less  so  that  the  fruits  of  the  process  for 
which  his  aid  was  indispensable  were  so  little  to  be 
served  at  any  table  of  his.  She  might  have  been 
originally  as  angular  as  he  had,  on  the  other  scene, 
positively  liked  her  for  being;  but  who  was  to  say 
now  what  might  n't  result  for  her  from  the  cultiva 
tion  of  a  motive  for  curves  ?  "  Oh,  exquisite  virtue 
of  circumstance,"  her  companion  admiringly  mused, 
"that  takes  us  by  the  hand  and  leads  us  forth  out 
of  corners  where  perforce  our  attitudes  are  a  trifle 
contracted,  and  beguiles  us  into  testing  unsuspected 
faculties!"  She  would  develop,  evidently,  right  and 
left,  and  to  the  top  of  her  capacity;  and  he  would 
have  been  at  the  bottom  of  it  all.  But  that  was 
where  he  would  remain,  essentially  and  obscurely; 
all  taken  for  granted,  merely  for  granted,  as  a  good 
cellar,  with  its  dusky  supporting  vaults,  is  taken  for 
granted  in  a  sound  house. 

They  went  a  great  deal  to  Saint  Peter's,  and  Mary 
easily  recognised  that  to  climb  the  long  low  yellow 
steps,  beneath  the  huge  florid  facade,  and  then, 
pushing  the  ponderous  leathern  apron  of  the  door, 
find  one's  self  a  mere  sentient  point  in  that  brilliant 
immensity,  was  an  act  that  had  its  way  of  remain 
ing  a  thrill.  In  those  days  the  hospitality  of  the  Vat- 

344 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ican  had  not  been  curtailed,  and  it  was  an  easy  and 
delightful  matter  to  pass  from  the  gorgeous  church 
to  the  solemn  company  of  the  antique  marbles. 
Here  it  was  that  communication  for  our  friends 
found  its  best  allies  ;  here  Rowland,  mounting  a  mild 
aesthetic  hobby  or  two,  might  amble  down  long  per 
spectives  as  with  the  ring  of  silver  hoofs  on  marble 
floors.  He  discovered  that  she  made  notes  of  her 
likes  and  dislikes  in  a  new-looking  little  pocket-book, 
and  he  wondered  to  what  extent  she  reported  his 
own  discourse.  These  were  hours  of  grave  felicity. 
The  galleries  had  been  so  cold  all  winter  that  Row 
land  had  been  an  exile  from  them;  but  now  that 
the  sun  was  already  scorching  in  the  great  square 
between  the  colonnades,  where  the  twin  fountains 
flashed  almost  fiercely,  the  comparative  chill  of  the 
image-bordered  vistas  was  as  tonic  as  the  breath  of 
antiquity.  The  great  herd  of  tourists  had  almost 
departed,  and^  the  couple  often  felt  themselves  for 
half  an  hour  at  a  time  in  sole  and  tranquil  pos 
session  of  the  beautiful  Braccio  Nuovo.  Here  and 
there  was  an  open  window,  where  they  lingered  and 
leaned,  looking  out  into  the  warm  dead  air,  over 
the  towers  of  the  city,  at  the  soft-hued  historic  hills, 
at  the  stately,  shabby  gardens  of  the  palace,  or  at 
some  sunny  empty  grass-grown  court  lost  in  the 
heart  of  the  labyrinthine  pile.  They  went  sometimes 
into  the  chambers  painted  by  Raphael,  and  of  course 
paid  their  respects  to  the  Sistine  Chapel;  but  Mary's 
evident  preference  was  to  linger  among  the  mar 
bles.  Once,  when  they  were  standing  before  that 
noblest  of  sculptured  portraits,  the  so-called  De- 

345 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

mosthenes  of  the  Braccio  Nuovo,  she  made  the  only 
spontaneous  allusion  to  her  plighted  faith  that  had 
yet  fallen  from  her  lips.  "  I  'm  so  glad  that  Roderick 's 
a  sculptor  —  like  the  man  who  did  that.  Glad,  I 
mean,  that  he  's  not  a  painter."  And  then  when  Row 
land  had  asked  her  the  reason  of  her  gladness:  "It 's 
not  that  painting 's  not  fine,  but  that  sculpture  's 
so  much  finer.  It 's  work  for  men!" 

Rowland  tried  at  times  to  make  her  talk  about  her 
self,  but  in  this  she  had  little  skill.  Since  she  thus 
struck  him  as  older,  as  much  older,  more  pliant  to 
social  uses  than  when  he  had  seen  her  at  home,  he 
wished  to  make  her  tell  him  how  her  interval  had  been 
occupied.  He  had  begun  by  exaggerating  to  her,  even, 
the  degree  in  which  he  found  her  different.  "  It  ap 
pears  then,"  she  said,  "that,  after  all,  one  can  grow 
even  in  our  hard  air." 

"Unquestionably.  You  may  there,  by  taking 
thought,  add  the  famous  cubit.  But^you  must  take 
a  great  deal  of  thought.  Your  growth  then,"  he 
went  on,  "was  unconscious?  You  didn't  watch 
yourself  and  water  your  roots  ?" 

She  paid  no  heed  to  his  question.  "  I  'm  willing  to 
grant,"  she  said,  "that  Europe's  richer  than  I  sup 
posed;  and  I  don't  admit  that  I  had  thought  of  it 
stupidly.  But  you  must  admit  that  America  has  a 
drop  for  the  thirsty." 

"I  have  not  a  fault  to  find  with  the  country  that 
produced  you'* 

"  It  produced  me  without  a  strain  of  its  resources. 
And  yet  you  want  me  to  change,"  she  said:  "to  as 
similate  Europe,  I  suppose  you  'd  call  it." 

346 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I've  felt  that  desire  only  on  general  principles. 
Shall  I  tell  you  what  I  feel  now  ?  If  America  has  made 
you  thus  far,  why  not  let  America  finish  you  ?  I 
should  like  to  ship  you  back  without  delay  and  see 
what  becomes  of  you.  If  that  sounds  uncivil  I  admit 
there  's  a  cold  intellectual  curiosity  in  it." 

She  shook  her  head.  "The  charm's  broken;  the 
thread  's  snapped!  I  prefer  to  remain  here." 

Invariably,  when  he  was  inclined  to  make  of  some 
chance  of  their  talk  a  direct  application  to  herself, 
she  wholly  failed  to  assist  him;  she  let  the  applica 
tion,  no  matter  how  awkwardly  for  him,  lie  where  it 
had  fallen.  Once,  with  a  spark  of  ardent  irritation,  he 
told  her  she  was  very  secretive.  At  this  she  coloured 
a  little,  and  he  said  that  in  default  of  any  larger 
confidence  it  would  at  least  be  a  satisfaction  to 
make  her  confess  to  that  charge.  But  even  this  satis 
faction  she  denied  him,  and  his  only  revenge  was  in 
risking,  two  or  three  times  afterwards,  an  allusion  to 
her  duplicity  that  was  violent  enough  for  a  joke.  He 
told  her  that  she  was  both  abysmal  and  tortuous  and 
he  wound  up  on  one  occasion  by  pronouncing  her 
labyrinthine.  "Very  good,"  she  answered  almost 
indifferently,  "and  now  please  remind  me  again  — 
I  have  forgotten  it  —  of  what  you  said  an  *  archi 
trave'  was." 

It  was  on  the  occasion  of  her  asking  him  a  question 
of  this  kind  that  he  charged  her  —  still  by  way  of  pleas 
antry,  but  in  a  tone  in  which,  had  she  been  curious  in 
the  matter,  she  might  have  detected  a  spark  of  restless 
ardour  —  with  having  an  insatiable  avidity  for  facts. 
"You  're  always  snatching  at  useful  instruction,"  he 

347 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

said;   "you  '11  never  consent  to  any  disinterested  con 
versation." 

She  frowned  a  little,  as  she  always  did  when  he 
arrested  their  talk  upon  something  personal.  But  this 
time  she  assented;  she  confessed  she  was  eager  for 
items.  "One  must  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines. 
I  must  lay  up  a  store  against  dark  days.  After  all,  I 
can't  believe  that  I  shall  spend  my  life  here." 

He  knew  he  had  divined  her  real  motive;  but  he 
felt  that  if  he  might  have  said  to  her — what  it  seemed 
impossible  to  say  —  that  fortune  possibly  had  a  bit 
ter  disappointment  in  store  for  her,  she  would  have 
been  capable  of  answering  immediately,  after  the  first 
sense  of  pain :  "  Say  then  I  'm  laying  up  resources 
for  solitude!" 

But  all  the  accusations  were  not  his  own.  He  had 
been  waiting  once  while  they  talked  —  they  were 
differing  and  arguing  a  little  —  to  see  whether  she 
would  take  her  forefinger  out  of  her  "  Murray,"  into 
which  she  had  inserted  it  to  keep  her  place.  It  would 
have  been  hard  to  say  why  this  point  interested  him, 
for  he  had  not  the  slightest  real  fear  she  would  ever 
turn  priggish.  The  simple  human  truth  was  that 
Rowland  was  jealous  of  science.  In  preaching  art 
and  history  to  her  he  had  slighted  again  the  good 
cause  that  he  might  never,  never  plead.  Suddenly 
sinking,  at  any  rate,  the  question  of  his  lessons  or  of 
her  learning,  she  faced  him  very  frankly  and  began 
to  frown.  At  the  same  time  she  let  the  "Murray" 
slide  to  the  ground,  and  he  was  so  charmed  with 
this  circumstance  that  he  made  no  movement  to  pick 
it  up. 

348 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"  You  're  awfully  inconsistent,  Mr.  Mallet,  you 
know,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  nothing  so  makes  for  good  relations  as 
inconsistency." 

"Not  of  your  elaborate  kind.  That  first  day  we 
were  in  Saint  Peter's  you  said  things  that  inspired 
me.  You  bade  me  plunge  into  all  this.  I  was  all  ready; 
I  only  wanted  a  little  push;  you  gave  me  a  great  one; 
here  I  am  up  to  my  neck!  And  now,  instead  of  help 
ing  me  to  swim,  you  stand  on  the  shore  —  the  shore  of 
superior  information  —  and  fling  pebbles  at  me!" 

"  Pebbles,  my  dear  young  lady  ?  They  're  life- 
preservers  ?  I  must  have  played  my  part  very  ill." 

"Your  part  ?  What 's  your  part  supposed  to  have 
been?" 

He  hesitated  a  moment.  "That  of  usefulness  pure 
and  simple." 

"I  don't  understand  you!"  she  said;  and  picking 
up  her  guide-book  she  fairly  buried  her  nose  in  it. 

That  evening  he  made  her  a  speech  which  she  per 
haps  understood  as  little.  "  Do  you  remember  my  beg 
ging  you  the  other  day  to  do  occasionally  as  I  told 
you  ?  It  seemed  to  me  you  tacitly  consented." 

"Very  tacitly!" 

"I  Ve  never  yet  really  presumed  on  your  consent. 
But  now  I  should  like  you  to  do  this:  whenever  you 
catch  me  in  the  act  of  what  you  call  flinging  pebbles, 
ask  me  the  meaning  of  some  architectural  term.  I 
shall  know  what  you  mean  —  a  word  to  the  wise!" 

There  came  a  morning  that  they  spent  among  the 
ruins  of  the  Palatine,  that  sunny  chaos  of  rich  decay 
and  irrelevant  renewal,  of  scattered  and  overtangled 

349 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

fragments,  half  excavated  and  half  identified,  known 
as  the  Palace  of  the  Caesars.  Nothing  in  Rome  is  more 
interesting  than  this  confused  and  crumbling  garden, 
where  you  stumble  at  every  step  on  the  disinterred 
bones  of  the  past;  where  damp  frescoed  corridors, 
relics  possibly  of  Nero's  Golden  House,  serve  as 
gigantic  bowers,  and  where  in  the  spring-time  you 
may  sit  on  a  Latin  inscription  in  the  shade  of  a  flower 
ing  almond  and  admire  the  composition  of  the  Cam- 
pagna.  The  day  left  a  deep  impression  on  Rowland's 
mind,  partly  owing  to  its  intrinsic  sweetness  and 
partly  because  his  companion  on  this  occasion  let 
some  book  of  reference  she  had  brought  with  her 
lie  unopened  for  an  hour  and  asked  several  ques 
tions  which  had  no  connection  with  Consuls  or  Caesars. 
She  had  begun  by  saying  that  it  was  coming  over  her, 
after  all,  that  Rome  was  a  ponderously  sad  place.  The 
sirocco  was  gently  blowing,  the  air  was  heavy,  she  was 
tired,  she  looked  pale  and  grave. 

"Everything,"  she  said,  "seems  to  insist  that  all 
things  are  vanity  indeed.  If  one  has  something  good 
to  do  I  suppose  one  feels  a  certain  strength  within  one 
to  say  otherwise.  But  if  one  has  nothing  it 's  surely 
depressing  to  live  year  after  year  among  the  ashes  of 
things  that  once  were  mighty.  If  I  were  to  remain 
here  I  should  either  become  permanently  'low,'  as 
they  say,  or  I  would  take  refuge  in  some  practical 
occupation." 

"And  what  occupation  would  be  your  idea  ?" 
"I  would  open  a  school  for  those  beautiful  little 
beggars,  though  I  'm  sadly  afraid  I  should  never  bring 
myself  to  scold  them." 

35° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I've  no  practical  occupation,"  said  Rowland, 
"  and  yet  I  've  kept,  I  think,  from  growing  absolutely 
limp." 

"I  don't  call  you  at  all  unoccupied,"  Mary  Garland 
declared. 

"  It 's  very  good  of  you.  Do  you  remember  our 
talking  about  that  at  Northampton  ?" 

"  During  that  walk  in  the  woods  ?  Perfectly.  Has 
your  coming  abroad  succeeded  for  yourself  as  well  as 
you  hoped  ?" 

"  I  think  I  may  say  that  it  has  turned  out  as  well  as 
I  expected." 

"Are  you  very  happy  ?" 

"Don't  I  look  so?" 

"So  it  seems  to  me.  But"  —  and  she  hesitated 
a  moment  —  "I  imagine  you  look  happy  whether 
you  're  so  or  not." 

"I'm  like  that  ancient  comic  mask  that  we  saw 
just  now  in  yonder  excavated  fresco;  I  'm  made  to 
grin." 

"  Shall  you  come  back  here  next  winter  ?"  she  went 
on  without  heed  of  this. 

"Very  probably." 

"Are  you  settled  for  ever?" 

"'For  ever'  is  a  long  time.  I  live  only  from  year 
to  year." 

"Shall  you  never  marry?" 

Rowland  gave  a  laugh.  "'For  ever'  —  'never'! 
You  go  in  for  big  figures.  I  've  taken  no  monastic 
vow." 

"Should  n't  you  like  to  have  a  home  ?" 

"You  mean  in  the  American  sense  ?"  And  then  as 
351 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

she  seemed  to  wonder:  "Some  one  to  share  it  with  ? 
Oh  yes,  I  should  like  it  immensely." 

To  this  she  made  no  rejoinder;  but  presently  she 
asked:  "Why  don't  you  write  a  book  ?" 

Rowland  laughed  —  this  time  more  freely.  "A 
book!  What  book  should  I  write?" 

"A  history;    something  about  art  or  antiquities." 

"  I  Ve  neither  the  learning  nor  the  talent." 

She  made  no  attempt  to  contradict  him;  she  sim 
ply  said  she  had  supposed  otherwise.  "You  ought,  at 
any  rate,"  she  continued  in  a  moment,  "to  do  some 
thing  for  yourself." 

"  For  myself  ?  I  should  have  supposed  that  if  ever 
a  man  seemed  to  live  for  himself — !" 

"  I  don't  know  how  it  seems,"  she  interrupted  — 
"to  careless  observers.  But  we  know  —  we  know 
that  you  've  lived  —  a  great  deal  for  us"  Her  voice 
trembled  slightly,  and  she  brought  out  the  last  words 
with  a  little  jerk. 

"She  has  had  that  speech  on  her  conscience," 
thought  Rowland;  "  she  has  been  thinking  she  owed 
it  to  me,  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  now  was  her  time  to 
make  it  and  have  done  with  it." 

She  went  on  in  a  way  which  confirmed  these  re 
flexions,  speaking  with  due  solemnity.  "You  ought 
to  be  made  to  know  very  well  what  we  all  feel. 
Mrs.  Hudson  tells  me  she  has  told  you  what  she 
feels.  Of  course  Roderick  has  expressed  himself. 
I  Ve  been  wanting  to  thank  you  too;  I  do,  most  sin 
cerely." 

Rowland  made  no  answer;  his  face  at  this  moment 
might  have  resembled  the  tragic  mask  more  than  the 

35* 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

comic.    But  Mary  was  not  looking  at  him;    she  had 
opened  her  eternal  explanatory  volume. 

In  the  afternoon  she  usually  drove  with  Mrs.  Hud 
son,  but  Rowland  frequently  saw  her  again  in  the 
evening.  He  was  apt  to  spend  half  an  hour  in  the  little 
sitting-room  at  the  hotel-pension  on  the  slope  of  the 
Pincian,  and  Roderick,  who  dined  regularly  with  his 
mother,  was  present  on  these  occasions.  Rowland 
saw  him  little  at  other  times,  and  for  three  weeks  no 
observations  passed  between  them  on  the  subject  of 
Mrs.  Hudson's  advent.  To  Rowland's  vision,  as  the 
weeks  elapsed,  the  benefits  to  proceed  from  the  pre 
sence  of  the  two  ladies  remained  shrouded  in  mystery. 
Roderick's  reflecting  surface  exhibited,  for  the  time, 
something  of  a  blur.  He  was  preoccupied  with  his 
progress  on  his  mother's  portrait,  which  was  taking  a 
very  happy  turn;  and  often  when  he  sat  silent,  with 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  his  legs  outstretched,  his 
head  thrown  back  and  his  eyes  on  vacancy,  it  was  to 
be  supposed  that  his  fancy  was  hovering  about  the 
half-shaped  image  in  his  studio,  exquisite  even  in  its 
immaturity.  He  said  little,  but  his  silence  was  no 
necessary  sign  of  disaffection,  for  he  clearly  liked 
again,  almost  as  he  had  liked  it  as  a  boy,  in  convales 
cence  from  measles,  to  lounge  away  the  hours  in  an 
air  so  charged  with  feminine  service.  He  was  not 
alert,  he  suggested  nothing  in  the  way  of  excursions 
(Rowland  was  the  prime  mover  in  such  as  were 
attempted),  but  he  conformed,  passively  at  least,  to 
the  tranquil  temper  of  the  two  women,  and  made 
neither  harsh  comments  nor  sombre  allusions.  Row 
land  wondered  whether  he  had,  after  all,  done  his 

353 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

friend  injustice  in  denying  him  the  sentiment  of  duty. 
He  refused  invitations,  to  Rowland's  knowledge,  in 
order  to  dine  at  the  sordid  little  table-d'hote;  wher 
ever  his  spirit  might  be  he  was  present  in  the  flesh 
with  religious  constancy.  Mrs.  Hudson's  felicity 
betrayed  itself  in  a  remarkable  tendency  to  finish  her 
sentences  and  wear  her  best  black  silk  gown.  Her 
tremors  had  trembled  away;  she  was  like  a  child  who 
discovers  that  the  shaggy  monster  it  has  so  long  been 
afraid  to  touch  is  an  inanimate  terror  compounded  of 
straw  and  sawdust,  and  that  there  may  even  be  a  gay 
impunity  in  tickling  the  absurd  nose.  As  to  whether 
the  love-knot  of  which  Mary  Garland  had  the  keeping 
still  held  firm,  who  should  pronounce  ?  The  young 
woman,  as  we  know,  wore  no  such  favour  on  her 
sleeve.  She  always  sat  at  the  table,  near  the  candles, 
with  rather  a  strenuous-looking  piece  of  needlework. 
This  was  the  attitude  in  which  Rowland  had  first 
seen  her,  and  he  thought,  now  that  he  had  seen  her 
in  several  others,  that,  even  when  maintained  with 
perhaps  too  deep  a  discretion,  it  was  not  the  least 
becoming. 


XIX 

THERE  came  at  last  a  couple  of  days  during  which 
Rowland  was  unable  to  go  to  the  hotel.  Late  in  the 
evening  of  the  second  Roderick  appeared  at  his 
lodgings.  In  a  few  moments  he  announced  that  he 
had  finished  the  bust  of  his  mother. 

"And  it 's  ripping,  you  know,"  he  declared.  "It 's 
quite  my  high-water  mark." 

"  I  'm  delighted  to  hear  it,"  Rowland  replied. 
"Never  again  talk  to  me  about  your  inspiration  being 
dead." 

"  Why  not  ?  This  may  be  its  last  kick !  I  feel  very 
tired.  But  the  thing  is  n't  too  nauseating,  though  I  do 
say  it.  They  tell  us  we  owe  so  much  to  our  parents. 
Well,  I  've  paid  the  debt  with  interest!"  He  walked 
up  and  down,  the  purpose  of  his  visit  evidently  still 
hung  fire.  "There  's  one  thing  more  I  want  to  say," 
he  presently  resumed.  "I  feel  as  if  I  ought  to  tell 
you."  He  stopped  before  his  companion  with  his 
head  high  and  his  face  as  clear  as  a  beach  at  the  ebb. 
"Your  invention  's  a  failure!" 

"My  invention?"  Rowland  repeated. 

"Bringing  out  my  mother  and  Mary." 

"A  failure?" 

"It 's  no  use!    They  don't  help  me." 

Rowland  had  believed  he  had  no  more  surprises 
for  him;  but  that  hero  had  himself  a  wide-eyed  stare. 

"They  bore  me  to  death,"  Roderick  went  on. 

355 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  oh!"  cried  Rowland. 

"  Listen,  listen,"  said  his  friend  with  perfect  gentle 
ness.  "I  'm  not  complaining  of  them;  I  'm  simply 
stating  a  fact.  I  'm  very  sorry  for  them;  I  'm  greatly 
disappointed." 

"Have  you  given  them  a  fair  trial  ?" 

"  Should  n't  you  call  it  that  ?  It  seems  to  me  I  Ve 
been  sublime." 

"You  've  done  very  well.  I  've  been  building  great 
hopes  on  it." 

"I've  done  too  well  —  that's  just  what's  the 
matter  with  me.  After  the  first  forty-eight  hours  my 
own  hopes  collapsed.  But  I  determined  to  fight  it 
out;  to  stand  within  the  temple;  to  let  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  descend.  Do  you  want  to  know  the  result  ? 
Another  week  of  it  and  I  shall  begin  to  hate  them. 
I  shall  want  to  poison  them." 

"Miserable  boy!"  Rowland  groaned.  "They're 
the  most  touching,  most  amiable  of  women." 

"Very  likely.  But  they  mean  no  more  to  me  than 
a  piano  means  to  a  pig-" 

"I  can  say  this,"  said  Rowland  in  a  moment.  "I 
don't  pretend  to  understand  the  state  of  your  rela 
tions  with  Miss  Garland." 

Roderick  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  let  his  hands 
drop  at  his  sides.  "She  thinks  all  the  world  of  me. 
She  likes  me  as  if  I  were  good  to  eat.  She  's  saving  me 
up,  cannibal-fashion,  as  if  I  were  a  big  feast.  That 's 
the  state  of  my  relations."  He  smiled  strangely. 

"Have  you  broken  off  your  engagement?" 

"  Broken  it  off  ?  You  can't  break  off  a  star  in  Orion. 
You  can  only,"  Roderick  explained,  "let  it  alone." 

356 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

His  friend  waited  a  little.  "Have  you  absolutely 
no  affection  for  her  ?" 

He  placed  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  held  it  there 
a  moment.  "  Dead  —  dead  —  dead ! " 

"I  wonder,"  Rowland  presently  observed,  "if 
you  really  know  what  a  charming  girl  she  is.  She  's 
an  awfully  charming  girl." 

"  Evidently  —  or  I  should  never  have  cared  for 
her." 

"She  has  completely  ceased  then  to  interest  you 
in  any  way  ?" 

"Oh,  don't  force  a  fellow  to  say  base  things!" 

"Well,  I  can  only  say  that  you  don't  know  what 
you  're  giving  up." 

Roderick  gave  a  quickened  glance.  "  Do  you  know 
so  well?" 

"You  must  admit  that  you  've  allowed  me  time  to 
find  out." 

Roderick  smiled  almost  sympathetically.  "Well, 
you  have  n't  wasted  it!" 

Rowland's  thoughts  were  crowding  upon  him 
fast.  If  Roderick  was  resolute  why  should  he  be 
gainsaid  ?  If  Mary  was  to  be  sacrificed  why  in  that 
way  try  to  save  her  ?  There  was  another  way;  it 
only  needed  a  little  presumption  to  make  it  possi 
ble.  Rowland  tried  to  summon  presumption  to  his 
aid;  but  whether  it  should  come  or  not  it  was  to  find 
a  particular  consideration  there  before  it.  This  pre 
sence  consisted  but  of  three  words  —  only  they  were 
cogent.  "For  her  sake  —  for  her  sake,"  it  dumbly 
murmured;  and  Rowland  resumed  his  argument. 
"I  don't  know  what  I  would  n't  do,"  he  said,  "rather 

357 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

than  that  Miss  Garland  should  be  disappointed." 
He  heard  himself  grotesquely  use  this  term  —  which 
might  have  applied  to  a  shopgirl, 

"There's  one  thing,  you  know,"  Roderick  an 
swered  with  an  odd  earnestness.  "She  is  very  very 
plucky." 

"  Well  then  if  she  's  plucky,  believe  that  with  a 
longer  chance,  a  better  chance,  she  won't  be  too  dis 
couraged  to  endeavour  to  regain  your  affection." 

"Do  you  know  what  you  ask  then?"  Roderick 
demanded.  "That  I  shall  make  love  to  a  girl  I 
hate  ?" 

"You  hate?" 

"As  her  lover  I  should  mortally  hate  her.  Do  you 
really  urge  my  marrying  a  woman  who  would  bore 
me  to  death  ?  I  should  n't  be  long  in  letting  her 
know  it,  and  then,  pray,  where  would  the  poor  thing 
be?" 

Rowland  walked  the  length  of  the  room  a  couple 
of  times  and  stopped  suddenly.  "Go  your  way 
then.  Say  all  this  to  her,  not  to  me." 

"To  her  ?  Why,  I  'm  afraid  of  her,  don't  you  see  ? 
I  want  you  to  help  me." 

"My  dear  chap,"  said  Rowland  with  a  strained 
smile,  "I  can't  help  you  any  more." 

Roderick  frowned,  hesitated  a  moment  and  then 
took  his  hat.  "Oh,  well,"  he  said,  "I  'm  not  so  afraid 
of  her  as  all  that!"  And  he  turned  as  if  to  depart. 

"Stop!"  cried  Rowland  as  he  laid  his  hand  on 
the  door. 

Roderick  paused  and  stood  waiting,  but  only  half 
patient. 

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RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Come  back;  sit  down  there  and  listen  to  me. 
Of  anything  you  say  in  your  present  state  of  mind 
you  '11  live,  I  'm  certain,  very  bitterly  to  repent.  You 
don't  know  what  you  really  think,  you  don't  know 
what  you  really  feel.  You  don't  know  your  own 
mind,  you  don't  do  justice  to  Miss  Garland.  All 
this  is  impossible  here,  where  your  conditions  for 
it  are  of  the  worst.  You  're  blind,  you  're  deaf, 
you  're  under  a  spell.  To  break  it  you  must  leave 
Rome." 

"Leave  Rome  ?    Rome  was  never  so  dear  to  me." 

"That's  not  of  the  smallest  consequence.  Leave 
it  to-morrow." 

"And  where  shall  I  go?" 

"Go  to  some  place  where  you  may  be  alone  with 
your  mother  and  your  cousin." 

"Alone  ?    You  '11  not  come  ?" 

"  Oh  yes  —  if  you  ask  it  of  me." 

Roderick,  inclining  his  head  a  little,  looked  at 
his  friend  askance.  "I  don't  understand  you,  you 
know,"  he  said.  "I  think  I  really  wish  you  liked 
Mary  either  a  little  less  or  a  little  more." 

Rowland  felt  himself  flush,  but  he  tried  to  keep 
his  words  from  reflecting  it.  "You  put  it  to  me  that 
I  'm  to  *  help  '  you,  but  on  these  present  terms  I  can 
do  nothing.  If  on  the  other  hand  you  '11  leave  your 
question  exactly  as  it  is  for  a  couple  of  months,  and 
meanwhile  leave  Rome,  leave  Italy,  I  '11  do  what  I 
can  to  ease  you  off  in  the  event  of  your  then  still 
wishing  to  be  liberated." 

"  I  must  do  without  your  help  then,  really,"  Rod 
erick  replied.  "Your  terms  are  impossible.  I  '11  leave 

359 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rome  at  the  time  I  Ve  always  intended  —  at  the 
end  of  June.  My  rooms  and  my  mother's  are  taken 
till  then;  all  my  arrangements  are  made  accord 
ingly.  We  '11  go  at  our  settled  time  —  not  before." 

"You  're  not  candid,"  said  Rowland.  "Your  real 
reason  for  staying  has  nothing  to  do  with  your  rooms." 

Roderick  after  an  instant  took  this  for  what  it  was 
worth.  "Well,  if  I  'm  not  candid  it's  for  the  first 
time  in  my  life.  Since  you  know  so  much  about  my 
real  reason,  let  me  hear  it.  No,  stop!"  he  suddenly 
added,  "I  won't  trouble  you.  You  're  right  —  I  Ve 
an  underhand  motive.  On  the  twenty-fourth  of  the 
month  Christina  Light 's  to  be  married.  As  I  take 
an  immense  interest  in  all  that  concerns  her  it 's 
an  occasion  on  which  I  wish  to  be  present." 

"But  you  said  the  other  day  at  Saint  Peter's  that 
it  was  by  no  means  certain  such  an  event  would 
now  take  place." 

"Apparently  I  was  wrong.  I  'm  told  the  invita 
tions  are  going  out." 

Rowland  felt  it  would  be  vain  to  remonstrate  and 
that  his  only  resource  was  to  make  the  best  bargain 
possible.  "If  I  offer  no  further  opposition  to  your 
waiting  for  — what  you  want  to  wait  for,  will  you 
promise,  meanwhile  and  afterwards,  for  a  certain 
period,  to  abide  by  my  judgement,  to  be  very  quiet 
and  very  good  and  say  and  do  nothing  that  may  give 
alarm  to  Miss  Garland  ?" 

"For  a  certain  period  ?  For  what  period  ?"  Rod 
erick  promptly  demanded. 

"Ah,  don't  screw  me  down  so!  Don't  you  under 
stand  that  I  've  taken  you  away  from  her,  that  I 

360 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

suffer  for  it  in  every  corner  of  my  mind,  and  that  I 
must  do  what  I  can  to  give  you  back  ?" 

"Do  what  you  can  then,"  said  Roderick,  throw 
ing  out  and  dropping  his  arms.  "Do  what  you  can, 
my  dear  man,  by  all  means."  He  stood  there  an  in 
stant  limpidly,  beautifully  passive  —  the  image  of 
some  noble  and  incureable  young  spendthrift  wind 
ing  up  a  slightly  sordid  interview  with  his  disagree 
ably  lucid  but  quite  trusty  man  of  business.  Then 
he  gave  his  friend  his  hand  firmly,  as  if  in  sanction 
of  the  latter's  freedom  of  action  —  after  which  they 
separated. 

His  bust  of  his  mother,  whether  or  no  it  were  a 
discharge  of  what  he  called  the  filial  debt,  was  at 
least  a  most  interesting  thing.  Rowland,  at  the  time 
it  was  finished,  met  Gloriani  one  evening,  and  this 
confident  critic  was  eager  for  news  of  it.  "  I  'm  told 
our  high-flying  friend  has  really  come  down  to  earth. 
He  has  been  doing  a  queer  little  old  woman." 

"A  queer  little  old  woman!"  Rowland  exclaimed. 
"My  dear  sir,  she's  Hudson's  admirable  mother." 

"All  the  more  reason  for  her  being  queer!  It 's 
a  thing  for  terra-cotta,  eh  ?" 

Rowland  hesitated  but  a  moment.  "  If  there 
were  a  big  enough  piece  in  the  world  it  would  be 
a  thing  for  ivory." 

His  friend  looked  doubtful.  "Oh,  ivoiy  begs  the 
question.  Why  not  fine  gold  ?  It  was  described  to 
me  at  all  events  as  a  charming  piece  of  quaintness; 
a  little  demure,  thin-lipped  old  lady  with  her  head 
on  one  side  and  the  prettiest  wrinkles  in  the  world 
—  a  sort  of  fairy  godmother." 

361 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Go  and  see  it  and  judge  for  yourself,"  Rowland 
said. 

"No,  I  seem  to  make  out  I  've  been  'sold.'  It  must 
be  quite  the  other  thing,  the  vieux  jeu,  domestic 
detail,  button-holes  and  hairpins  for  the  campi- 
santi.  I  wish  the  perverse  young  wretch  would  let 
me  save  him!" 

But  a  day  or  two  later  Rowland  met  him  again 
in  the  street  and,  as  they  were  near,  proposed  they 
should  adjourn  to  Roderick's  studio.  He  consented, 
and  on  entering  they  found  the  young  master  of  the 
scene.  Roderick  had  from  the  first,  as  we  know, 
never  "grovelled"  before  the  less  frequent  of  his 
guests,  and  his  noble  detachment  varied  to-day  by 
no  perceptible  shade.  But  his  great  confrere,  like 
the  truth-lover  he  really  was,  cared  nothing  for  his 
manners;  he  cared  only  for  the  question  of  his  value. 
The  bust  of  Mrs.  Hudson  touched  Gloriani  as  he 
was  seldom  touched;  the  beauty  of  it  bloomed  like 
a  flower  that  had  grown  in  the  night.  The  poor  lady's 
small,  neat,  timorous  face  had  certainly  no  great 
character,  but  Roderick  had  presented  its  sweet 
ness,  its  mildness,  its  minuteness,  its  still  maternal 
passion,  with  the  most  unerring  art.  The  truth  was 
all  tenderness,  the  tenderness  all  truth.  Gloriani 
stood  taking  this  in  while  Roderick  wandered  away 
into  the  neighbouring  room. 

"I  give  it  up!"  he  said  at  last.  "I  don't  under 
stand  it." 

"But  you  like  it?"  Rowland  insisted. 

"Like  it?  It's  a  pearl  of  pearls.  Tell  me  this," 
his  companion  added;  "has  he  a  special  worship 

362 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  her,  is  he  one  of  your  sons  in  a  thousand  ?"  And 
he  gave  Rowland  almost  a  hard  look. 

"Why,  she  adores  the  ground  he  treads  on,"  said 
Rowland,  smiling. 

"I  take  that  for  an  answer!  But  it 's  none  of  my 
business.  Only  if  I,  in  his  place,  being  suspected  of 
having  —  what  shall  I  call  it  ?  —  a  cold  and  corrupt 
heart,  had  risked  that  look  of  love,  oh,  oh !  I  should  be 
called  a  pretty  lot  of  names.  Charlatan,  poseur, 
arrangeurl  But  he  can  do  as  he  chooses!  My  dear 
young  man,  I  know  you  don't  like  me,"  he  went  on  as 
Roderick  came  back.  "But  it 's  a  pity  to  waste  your 
time  on  that,  because  you  're  strong  enough  never  to 
think  of  me  again.  You  're  strong  all  round  and 
everywhere." 

Roderick  even  at  this  scarce  departed  from  his 
dryness.  "I'm  sorry  to  differ  from  you,  but  I'm 
hopelessly  weak." 

Well,  his  visitor  still  allowed  for  his  arrogance. 
"  I  told  you  last  year  that  you  would  n't  keep  it  up. 
I  was  a  great  ass.  You  will  keep  it  up." 

"I  beg  your  pardon  —  I  won't!"  retorted  Rod 
erick. 

"Though  I  'm  a  great  ass  all  the  same,  eh  ?  Well, 
call  me  what  you  will,  so  long  as  you  turn  out  this  sort 
of  thing.  I  don't  suppose  it  makes  any  particular 
difference  to  you,  but  I  shall  rejoice,  for  myself,  to  have 
made  this  sign  of  how  largely  I  count  on  you." 

Roderick  stood  looking  at  him  with  a  strange 
rigour.  It  turned  slowly  to  a  flush,  and  two  glittering 
angry  tears  filled  his  eyes.  It  was  the  first  time  Row 
land  had  ever  seen  them  there;  he  saw  them  but  once 

363 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

again.  Poor  Gloriani,  he  was  sure,  had  never  in  his 
life  spoken  with  less  of  the  mocking  spirit;  but  a  pro 
fession  of  faith  came  wrongly,  somehow,  at  such  a 
moment,  for  Roderick's  nerves.  He  turned  away  with 
his  imprecation  scarce  suppressed.  Gloriani  was  ever 
trying  to  get  near  life,  but  life  now  baffled  him. 
"What's  the  matter  with  him?"  he  asked  with 
simplicity. 

Rowland  gave  a  sad  smile  and  touched  his  fore 
head.  "  Genius  —  too  much  of  it ! " 

"Ah,  one  must  n't  have  it  so  badly  as  that!"  But 
Gloriani  sent  another  parting,  lingering  look  at  the 
bust.  "It 's  as  cool  as  a  draught  of  the  acqua  Marcia 
—  and  as  pretty  as  the  plash  of  it.  He  is  to  be  counted 
on.  But  I  'm  glad,  since  his  spirit 's  so  high,  that 
mine  's  a  poorer  thing.  It  makes,"  he  explained  with 
a  laugh  as  he  looked  for  Roderick  to  wave  him  good 
bye  and  saw  his  back  still  turned,  "it  makes  a  more 
sociable  studio!" 

Rowland  had  purchased,  as  he  supposed,  tem 
porary  peace  for  Mary  Garland;  but  his  own  spirit, 
in  these  days,  was  given  o\«er  to  the  e  ements.  The 
ideal  life  had  been  his  general  purpose,  but  the  ideal 
life  could  only  go  on  very  real  legs  and  feet,  and  the 
body  and  the  extremities  somehow  failed  always  to 
move  in  concert.  The  days  passed,  but  brought  with 
them  no  official  invitation  to  Christina  Light's 
wedding.  He  occasionally  met  her,  and  he  occasion 
ally  met  Prince  Casamassima;  but  the  two  were 
always  separate:  they  were  apparently  taking  their 
happiness  in  the  inexpressive  and  isolated  manner 
proper  to  people  of  social  eminence.  Rowland  con- 

364 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tinued  to  see  Madame  Grandoni,  for  whom  he  felt  a 
confirmed  esteem.  He  had  always  talked  to  her  with 
comfortable  candour,  but  now  he  made  her  the  con 
fidant  of  his  innermost  worries.  Roderick  and  Rod 
erick's  concerns  had  been  a  common  theme  with  him, 
and  it  was  in  the  natural  course  to  talk  of  Mrs. 
Hudson's  arrival  and  Mrs.  Hudson's  companion.  In 
respect  to  certain  equivocations,  however,  that  he 
had  not  been  ashamed  to  practise  in  regard  to  this 
young  lady,  she  lost  no  time  in  putting  his  case  for 
him  in  a  nutshell.  "At  one  moment  you  tell  me 
the  girl  's  plain,"  she  said;  "the  next  you  tell  me 
she 's  lovely.  I  '11  call  on  them,  I  '11  invite  them. 
But  one  thing 's  very  clear ;  you  're  in  love  with 
her  down  to  the  ground."  Rowland,  for  all  an 
swer,  glanced  round  to  see  that  no  one  heard  her, 
and  it  was  odd  to  him  that  he  should  so  like  her 
saying  it. 

"More  than  that,"  she  added,  "you  've  been  in 
love  with  her  these  two  years.  There  was  that  certain 
something  about  you  —  !  I  knew  you  were  of  what  we 
Germans  call  a  subjective  turn  of  mind;  but  you  had 
a  twist  of  it  more  than  was  natural.  Why  did  n't  you 
tell  me  at  once  ?  You  would  have  saved  me  a  great 
deal  of  trouble.  And  poor  Augusta  Blanchard  too!" 
With  which  Madame  Grandoni  produced,  for  their 
consumption,  a  colloquial  plum.  Miss  Blanchard 
and  Mr.  Leavenworth  were  going  to  make  a  match; 
the  young  lady  had  been  staying  for  a  month  at 
Albano,  and  as  Mr.  Leavenworth  had  been  dancing 
attendance  the  event  was  a  matter  of  course.  Row 
land,  who  had  been  lately  reproaching  himself  with 

365 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

a  failure  of  attention  to  Augusta's  doings,  made  some 
such  observation. 

"  But  you  did  n't  find  it  so,"  his  hostess  objected  — 
"  I  mean  when  you,  on  your  side,  were  so  kind  to  her 
without  seeming  to  care  that  it  might  have  com 
mitted  you.  It  was  a  matter  of  course  perhaps  that 
Mr.  Leavenworth,  who  seems  to  be  going  about 
Europe  with  the  sole  view  of  picking  up  furniture 
for  his  'home,'  as  he  calls  it,  should  think  Miss 
Blanchard  a  very  handsome  morceau;  but  it  was 
not  a  matter  of  course  —  or  it  need  n't  have  been 
—  that  she  should  be  willing  to  become  a  sort  of 
superior  table-ornament.  She  would  have  accepted 
you  in  a  jiffy  if  you  had  tried." 

"You  're  supposing  the  insupposable,"  said  Row 
land.  "She  never  gave  me  a  particle  of  encourage 
ment." 

"What  would  you  have  had  her  do  ?  The  poor  girl 
did  her  best,  and  I  'm  sure  that  when  she  surrendered 
to  Mr.  Leavenworth  she  was  thinking  of  quite  an 
other  gentleman." 

"She  thought  of  the  pleasure  her  marriage  would 
give  him." 

"Aye,  pleasure  indeed!  She's  a  thoroughly  good 
girl,  but  she  has  her  little  grain  of  feminine  spite  as 
well  as  the  rest.  Well,  he  's  richer  than  you,  and  she 
will  have  what  she  wants;  but  before  I  forgive  you 
I  must  wait  and  see  this  new  arrival  —  what  do 
you  call  her  ?  —  Miss  Garlant  of  the  Back  Woods. 
If  I  like  her  very  much  I  '11  forgive  you;  if  I  don't 
I  shall  always  bear  you  a  grudge." 

Rowland  answered  that  he  was  sorry  to  forfeit  any 
366 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

advantage  she  might  offer  him,  but  that  his  excul 
patory  passion  for  Miss  Garland  of  the  Back  Woods 
was  a  figment  of  her  fancy.  Miss  Garland  of  the 
Back  Woods  —  he  declared  he  liked  that  title  — 
was  engaged  to  another  man.  He  himself  had  no  claim. 

"Well  then," said  Madame  Grandoni,  "if  I  like  her 
we  '11  have  it  that  you  ought  to  be  what  you  say  — 
perhaps  mendaciously  —  that  you  're  not.  If  you 
fail  in  this  it  will  be  a  double  misdemeanour.  The 
man  she  has  accepted  does  n't  care  a  straw  for  her. 
Leave  me  alone  and  I  '11  tell  her  what  I  think  of  the 
man  she  has  n't!" 

As  to  Christina  Light's  marriage  Madame  Gran 
doni  could  say  nothing  positive.  The  maiden  had  of 
late  made  her  several  flying  visits,  in  the  intervals 
of  the  usual  pre-matrimonial  shopping  and  dress- 
fitting;  she  had  spoken  of  the  event  with  a  toss  of  her 
head,  as  a  matter  which  with  a  wise  old  friend  who 
viewed  things  in  their  essence  she  need  n't  pretend 
to  treat  as  a  solemnity.  It  was  for  Prince  Casamas- 
sima  to  do  that.  "It 's  what  they  call  a  marriage  of 
reason,"  she  once  had  said.  "That  means,  you 
know,  a  marriage  of  madness." 

"  What  have  you  managed  for  her  —  since  you 
must  have  managed  something  —  in  the  way  of 
advice  ?"  Rowland  asked. 

"Very  little,  but  that  little  has  been  a  good  word 
for  the  Prince.  I  know  nothing  of  the  mysteries  of  the 
young  lady's  heart.  It  may  be  a  gold-mine,  but  at  any 
rate  it 's  at  the  bottom  of  a  very  long  shaft.  The 
marriage  in  itself,  however,  is  an  excellent  marriage. 
It's  not  only  'great,'  but  it's  good.  I  think  Chris- 

367 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tina  's  quite  capable  of  giving  it  some  wrong  turn,  of 
spoiling  somehow  its  beauty;  but  there  's  no  position 
in  the  world  that  would  be  sacred  to  her.  The  Prince 
is  an  irreproachable  young  man;  there  's  nothing 
against  him,  nothing  inconvenient  about  him  but  that 
his  name  zV,  in  his  opinion,  something  to  live  up  to. 
It 's  not  often,  I  fancy,  that  a  personage  wearing  it 
has  been  put  through  his  paces  at  this  rate.  No  one 
knows  the  wedding-day;  the  cards  of  invitation  have 
been  printed  half  a  dozen  times  over  with  a  different 
date;  each  time  Christina  has  destroyed  them.  There 
are  people  in  Rome  who  are  furious  at  the  delay; 
they  want  to  get  away;  they  're  in  a  dreadful  fright 
about  the  fever-season,  but  they  're  dying  to  see  the 
wedding,  and  if  the  day  were  fixed  they  would  make 
their  arrangements  to  wait  for  it.  I  think  it  very 
possible  that  after  having  kept  them  for  a  month  and 
been  the  cause  of  a  dozen  cases  of  malaria,  Christina 
will  be  married  at  sunrise  by  an  old  friar —  in  Romeo 
and  Juliet  fashion  —  and  with  simply  the  legal 
witnesses." 

Rowland  brooded  a  while.  "I  feel  as  if  we  had  still 
to  reckon  with  her." 

"Do  you  mean,"  his  friend  asked,  "that  she  may 
even  yet  run  away  with  Mr.  Hudson  ?" 

It  was  more  than  he  had  meant,  but  it  had  struck 
him  the  next  minute  as  not  perhaps  more  than  might 
be.  "I  'm  prepared  for  anything!" 

"Do  you  mean  that  Mr.  Hudson's  ready?" 

"Do  you  think  she  is  ?"  Rowland  asked. 

"I  think  they're  a  precious  pair  —  and  yet  that 
one  has  n't  said  all*when  one  says,  as  I  have  so  often 

368 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

done,  that  she  likes  drama,  likes  theatricals  —  what 
do  you  call  them  ?  —  histrionics,  for  their  own 
sweet  sake.  She  's  certain  to  do  every  now  and  then 
something  disinterested  and  sincere,  something  for 
somebody  else  than  herself.  She  needs  to  think  well 
of  herself;  she  knows  a  fine  character  easily  when  she 
meets  one;  she  hates  to  suffer  by  comparison,  even 
though  the  comparison  be  made  by  herself  alone; 
and  when  the  figure  she  makes,  to  her  own  imagina 
tion,  ceases  to  please  or  to  amuse  her  she  has  to  do 
something  to  smarten  it  up  and  give  it  a  more  striking 
turn.  But  of  course  she  must  always  do  that  at  some 
body's  expense  —  not  one  of  her  friends  but  must 
sooner  or  later  pay,  and  the  best  of  them  doubtless 
the  oftenest.  Her  attitudes  and  pretences  may  some 
times  worry  one,  but  I  think  we  have  most  to  pray 
to  be  guarded  from  her  sincerities.  Those  are  the 
prickles,  after  all,  that  she  most  turns  upon  her  mother 
—  and  that  she  will  turn  yet  upon  her  husband.  But 
we  mustn't,  all  the  same,"  Madame  Grandoni  con 
cluded,  "give  her  up.  Don't  you!''  she  said  with 
some  emphasis  to  Rowland. 

"Oh  me!"  he  simply  sighed:  "I  'm  prickle-proof!" 
His  sagacious  friend  came  the  next  day  to  call  on 
the  two  ladies  from  Northampton.  She  carried  their 
shy  affections  by  storm  and  made  them  promise  to 
drink  tea  with  her  on  the  evening  of  the  morrow.  Her 
visit  was  an  epoch  in  the  life  of  poor  Mrs.  Hudson, 
who  did  nothing  but  make  sudden  desultory  allu 
sions  to  her  for  the  next  thirty-six  hours.  "To  think 
of  her  being  a  foreigner!"  she  would  exclaim  after 
much  intent  reflexion  over  her  knitting;  "she  speaks 

369 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  language  as  if  she  were  driving  her  own  carriage  — 
and  with  her  whip  well  up  in  her  hand,  don't  you 
think?"  Then  in  a  little  while :  "  She  was  n't  so  much 
dressed  as  you  might  have  expected.  Did  you  notice 
how  easy  it  was  in  the  waist  ?  I  wonder  if  that 's  the 
fashion  ?"  Or  "She  's  very  old  to  wear  a  jaunty  hat; 
I  should  never  dare  to  wear  a  jaunty  hat!"  Or  "Did 
you  notice  her  hands  ?  —  very  pretty  hands  for  such  a 
stout  person.  A  great  many  rings,  but  nothing  very 
handsome.  I  suppose  they  're  handed  down."  Or 
"She  's  certainly  not  handsome,  but  she  looks  won 
derfully  clever.  I  wonder  why  she  does  n't  have  some 
thing  done  to  her  teeth."  Rowland  also  received  a 
summons  to  Madame  Grandoni's  tea-drinking,  and 
went  betimes,  as  he  had  been  requested.  He  took  a 
fond  interest,  which  he  would  have  been  at  a  loss  to 
defend,  in  Mary  Garland's  first  appearance,  as  he 
felt  it  to  be,  on  any  social,  certainly  on  any  critical, 
stage.  The  two  ladies  had  arrived  with  Roderick, 
easily  "interesting"  but  irrecoverably  vague,  in 
attendance.  Miss  Blanchard  was  also  present, 
escorted  by  Mr.  Leavenworth,  and  the  party  was 
completed  by  a  couple  of  dozerf  artists  of  both  sexes 
and  various  nationalities.  It  was  a  friendly  and  lively 
concourse,  like  all  Madame  Grandoni's  parties,  and  in 
the  course  of  the  evening  there  was  some  excellent 
music.  People  often  played  and  sang  for  her  who 
were  not  in  general  to  be  heard  for  the  asking.  She  was 
herself  a  superior  musician,  and  singers  found  it  a 
privilege  to  perform  to  her  accompaniment.  Rowland 
conversed  with  various  persons,  but  for  the  first  time 
in  his  life  his  charity  deserted  its  post  and  his  atten- 

37° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tion  flagrantly  strayed:  they  were  rejoicingly  con 
scious  of  but  one  young  woman,  who  filled  for  him, 
though  all  by  no  motion  of  her  own,  the  part  of 
heroine  of  the  occasion.  Madame  Grandoni  had  said 
that  he  sometimes  spoke  of  this  person  as  pretty  and 
sometimes  as  plain;  to-night  if  he  had  had  occasion 
to  describe  her  type  he  would  recklessly  have  pro 
nounced  it  "rich."  It  was  as  if  she  had  somehow  put 
lights  in  her  dim  windows  and  you  could  hear  some 
where  behind  them  the  tuning  of  mystic  fiddles.  She 
was  dressed  more  than  he  had  ever  seen  her;  it  was 
becoming  and  gave  her  an  importance,  all  attaching, 
for  the  eye.  Two  or  three  persons  were  apparently 
witty  people,  for  she  sat  listening  to  them  with  her 
brilliant  natural  smile.  Rowland,  from  an  opposite 
corner,  reflected  that  he  had  never  varied  in  his  appre 
ciation  of  Miss  Blanchard's  classic  contour,  but  that 
somehow  to-night  it  impressed  him  hardly  more  than 
an  effigy  stamped  on  a  bad  modern  medal.  Roderick 
could  not  be  accused  of  rancour,  for  he  had  approached 
Mr.  Leavenworth  with  unstudied  familiarity  and, 
lounging  against  the  wall  with  hands  in  pockets,  held 
him  evidently  under  the  spell  of  the  good  gentleman's 
not  quite  being  able  to  decide  as  to  the  biggest  hat,  as 
it  were,  that  his  dignity  could  put  on.  Now  that  he  had 
done  him  an  impertinence  the  young  man  apparently 
found  him  less  intolerable.  Mr.  Leavenworth  stood 
stirring  his  tea  and  silently  opening  and  shutting  his 
mouth,  without  looking  at  his  interlocutor;  he  might 
have  been  a  large  drowsy  dog  snapping  at  flies.  Row 
land  had  found  it  agitating  to  be  told  Miss  Blanchard 
would  have  married  him  for  the  asking,  and  he  would 

371 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

have  felt  embarrassment  in  going  to  speak  to  her  if 
he  had  n't  worked  it  out  so  well,  in  the  interval,  from 
memory,  that  he  had  n't  really  trifled  with  her.  The 
facile  side  of  a  union  with  Miss  Blanchard  had  never 
been  present  to  his  mind;  it  had  struck  him  as  a  thing, 
in  all  ways,  to  be  compassed  with  a  great  effort,  and 
he  had  not  even  renounced  the  effort:  he  had  never 
come,  he  felt,  so  near  it.  He  had  half  an  hour's  talk 
with  her;  a  farewell  talk,  as  it  seemed  to  him  —  a 
farewell  not  to  a  real  illusion,  but  to  the  idea  that  for 
him,  in  the  matter  of  committing  himself  for  life, 
grim  thought,  there  could  ever  be  a  motive  that 
wrould  n't  ache  like  a  wound.  Such  a  pressure  would 
resemble  that  of  the  button  of  an  electric  bell  kept 
down  by  the  thumb  —  prescribing  definite  action  to 
stop  the  merciless  ring.  He  congratulated  Miss 
Blanchard  upon  her  engagement,  and  she  received 
his  good  wishes  as  if  he  had  been  a  servant,  at 
dinner,  presenting  the  potatoes  to  her  elbow.  She 
helped  herself  in  moderation,  but  also  all  in  profile. 
He  had  wished  to  be  decent,  but  he  felt  the  chili 
and  his  zeal  relaxed,  while  he  fell  a-thinking  that 
a  certain  natural  ease  in  a  woman  was  the  most 
delightful  thing  in  the  world.  There  was  Christina 
Light,  who  had  decidedly  too  much,  and  there  was 
Miss  Blanchard,  who  had  decidedly  too  little,  and 
there  was  Mary  Garland,  who  had  decidedly  the 
right  amount.  He  went  to  Madame  Grandoni  in  an 
adjoining  room,  where  she  was  pouring  out  tea.  "  I  '11 
make  you  an  excellent  cup,"  she  said,  "  because  I  've 
forgiven  you." 

He   looked    at   her,   answering   nothing;    but   he 
372 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

swallowed  his  tea  with  great  gusto  and  a  wait  for 
more  —  more  of  everything;  by  all  of  which  she 
could  know  he  was  gratified.  In  a  moment  he  inti 
mated  that  in  so  far  as  he  had  sinned  he  was  now 
quite  square  with  his  conscience,  but  Madame  Gran- 
doni  had  already  forgotten. 

"The  Back  Woods  then,"  she  said,  "grow  such 
interesting  plants  ?  I  like  your  young  lady  —  she  's 
not  a  bit  banal.  And  yet  she  escapes  it  so  quietly 
—  not,  as  they  sometimes  do,  by  standing  on  her 
head.  I  think  that  if  she  '11  let  me  make  a  friend 
of  her  I  sha'n't  bore  her  either.  I  have  a  -flair —  oh 
yes,  in  spite  of  Augusta,  Augusta  Victoria  as  I  now 
call  her  —  for  the  chance  of  their  boring  me.  Miss 
Garlant,  you  deep  creature,  defies  at  any  rate  your 
account  of  her." 

"She's  unfortunately  plain,"  said  Rowland, 
laughing  and  reenforcing  his  account;  "very  simple 
and  artless  and  ignorant  - 

"But  thoroughly  neat  and  respectable!"  -his 
old  friend  took  him  up.  "Which,  being  interpreted, 
means  *  She 's  very  handsome,  very  subtle,  very 
clever,  and  has  read  hundreds  of  volumes  on  winter 
evenings  in  the  country.'" 

"You  're  a  veritable  sorceress,"  Rowland  made 
answer;  "you  frighten  me  away."  As  he  was  turn 
ing  to  leave  her  there  rose  above  the  hum  of  voices 
in  the  drawing-room  the  sharp  grotesque  note  of  a 
barking  dog.  Their  eyes  met  in  a  glance  of  intelli 
gence. 

"  There  's  the  veritable  sorceress ! "  Madame  Gran- 
doni  declared.  "The  sorceress  and  her  necromantic 

373 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

poodle!"  And  she  hastened  back  to  the  post  of  hos 
pitality. 

Rowland,  accompanying  her,  found  Christina 
Light  erect  in  the  middle  of  the  drawing-room  and 
looking  about  in  perplexity.  Her  poodle,  sitting  on 
his  haunches  and  gazing  at  the  company,  had  ap 
parently  been  expressing  a  sympathetic  displeasure 
at  the  absence  of  a  welcome.  But  in  a  moment 
Madame  Grandoni  had  come  to  the  girl's  relief  and 
Christina  had  tenderly  kissed  her. 

"I  had  no  idea,"  the  young  woman  began  while 
she  surveyed  the  assembly,  "that  you  had  such  a 
lot  of  grand  people,  or  I  would  never  have  come  in. 
The  servant  said  nothing;  he  took  me  for  an  in 
vitee.  I  came  to  spend  a  neighbourly  half-hour;  you 
know  I  have  n't  many  left!  It  was  too  dismally  dreary 
at  home.  I  hoped  I  should  find  you  alone  and  I 
brought  Stenterello  to  play  with  the  cat.  Since  I  'm 
here,  at  any  rate,  I  beg  you  to  let  me  stay.  I  'm  not 
dressed,  but  am  I  very  hideous  ?  I  '11  sit  in  a  corner 
and  no  one  will  notice  me.  My  dear  sweet  lady,  do 
let  me  stay !  Only,  why  in  the  world  did  n't  you  ask 
me  ?  I  never  have  been  to  a  little  party  like  this. 
They  must  be  very  charming.  No  dancing  —  tea 
and  conversation?  No  tea,  thank  you;  but  if  you 
could  spare  a  biscuit  for  Stenterello;  a  sweet  bis 
cuit,  please.  Really,  why  did  n't  you  ask  me  ?  Do 
you  have  these  things  often  ?  Madame  Grandoni, 
it 's  very  unkind!"  And  the  girl,  who  had  delivered 
herself  of  the  foregoing  succession  of  sentences  in 
her  usual  low,  cool,  penetrating  voice,  uttered  these 
last  words  with  a  certain  tremor  of  feeling.  "  I  see," 

374 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

she  went  on;  "I  do  very  well  for  balls  and  great 
banquets,  but  when  people  wish  to  have  a  cosy, 
friendly,  comfortable  evening,  they  leave  me  out 
with  the  big  flower-pots  and  the  gilt  candlesticks." 

"I  am  sure  you're  welcome  to  stay,  my  dear," 
said  Madame  Grandoni,  "and  at  the  risk  of  dis 
pleasing  you  I  must  confess  that  if  I  did  n't  invite 
you  it  was  because  you  are,  in  effect,  so  grand  for 
small  occasions  and  you  come,  as  it  were,  so  dear. 
Your  dress  will  do  very  well,  with  its  fifty  flounces, 
and  there  's  no  need  of  your  going  into  a  corner. 
Indeed  since  you  're  here  I  propose  to  have  the 
glory  of  it.  You  must  remain  where  my  people  can 
see  you." 

"  They  're  evidently  determined  to  do  that  by  the 
way  they  stare.  Do  they  think  I  've  come  to  dance 
a  tarantella?  Who  are  they  all;  do  I  know  them?" 
And  lingering  in  the  spacious  centre,  with  her  arm 
passed  into  Madame  Grandoni's,  she  let  her  eyes 
wander  slowly  from  group  to  group;  all  groups  of 
course  observing  her.  Standing  in  the  little  circle 
of  lamplight  with  the  hood  of  an  Eastern  burnous 
shot  with  silver  threads  falling  back  from  her  beau 
tiful  head,  while  one  hand  gathered  its  volumin 
ous  shimmering  folds  and  the  other  played  with 
the  silken  top-knot  on  the  uplifted  head  of  her 
poodle,  she  was  a.  figure  radiantly  romantic  and 
might  have  suggested  an  extemporised  tableau  vi- 
vant.  Rowland's  position  made  it  becoming  for  him 
to  speak  to  her  without  delay.  As  she  looked  at  him 
he  saw  that,  judging  by  the  light  of  her  beautiful 
eyes,  she  was  in  a  humour  to  a  specimen  of  which 

375 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

she  had  not  yet  treated  him.  In  a  simpler  person 
he  would  have  called  it  a  great  and  direct  kindness, 
but  in  this  young  lady's  deportment  the  flower  was 
apt  to  be  one  thing  and  the  perfume  another. 
"Tell  me  about  these  people,"  she  went  on  again: 
"I  had  no  idea  there  were  so  many  people  in  Rome 
I  've  not  seen.  What  are  they  all  talking  about  ? 
It 's  all  very  clever,  I  suppose,  and  quite  beyond 
me.  There  's  Miss  Blanchard  detaching  herself  as 
usual  against  the  darkest  object  she  can  find.  She 
would  find  means  to  make  the  Great  Desert  resem 
ble  a  photographer's  studio.  But  she  's  too  much 
like  a  head  on  a  postage-stamp.  And  there  's  that 
nice  little  old  lady  in  black,  Mrs.  Hudson.  What 
a  dear  little  woman  for  a  mother!  Comme  elle  est 
proprette  !  And  the  other,  the  fiancee,  of  course  she  's 
here.  Ah,  I  see!"  She  paused;  she  was  looking 
intently  at  Mary  Garland.  Rowland  measured  the 
sincerity  of  her  glance  and  suddenly  acquired  a 
conviction.  "I  should  like  so  much  to  know  her!" 
she  said,  turning  to  Madame  Grandoni.  "She  has 
a  charming  face;  I  'm  sure  she  's  the  nicest  person 
here.  I  wish  very  much  you  would  introduce  me. 
No,  on  second  thoughts  I  would  rather  you  did  n't. 
I  '11  speak  to  her  bravely  myself,  as  a  friend  of  her 
—  what  do  you  call  it  in  English  ?  —  her  promesso 
sposo."  Madame  Grandoni  and  Rowland  exchanged 
glances  of  baffled  conjecture,  and  Christina  flung 
off  her  burnous,  crumpled  it  together  and,  with 
uplifted  finger,  tossing  it  into  a  corner,  gave  it  in 
charge  to  her  poodle,  who  straightway  proceeded 
to  squat  on  it  with  upright  vigilance.  Christina 

376 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

crossed  the  room  with  the  step  and  smile  of  a  min 
istering  angel  and  introduced  herself  to  the  young 
lady  from  Northampton.  She  had  once  told  Row 
land  that  she  would  show  him  some  day  how  aw 
fully  civil  she  knew  how  to  be,  and  was  now  redeem 
ing  her  promise.  Rowland,  watching  her,  saw  Mary 
Garland  rise  slowly  in  response  to  her  greeting 
and  look  at  her  with  serious  deep-gazing  eyes.  The 
almost  dramatic  opposition  of  these  two  keenly 
interesting  girls  touched  him  with  a  nameless  appre 
hension,  and  after  a  moment  he  preferred  to  turn 
away.  In  doing  so  he  noticed  Roderick,  who,  stand 
ing  planted  on  the  train  of  a  lady's  dress,  was  watch 
ing  the  same  passage  with  undisguised  earnestness. 
There  were  several  more  pieces  of  music;  Row 
land  sat  in  a  corner  and  listened  to  them.  When 
they  were  over  the  company  began  to  take  leave, 
Mrs.  Hudson  among  the  number.  Rowland  saw 
her  come  up  to  Madame  Grandoni,  clinging  shyly 
to  Mary  Garland's  arm.  Mary  looked  a  little  as  if 
she  had  just  jumped,  rather  dangerously,  to  save  her 
life  or  her  honour,  from  some  great  height.  The  two 
ladies,  he  gathered,  had  appealed  tacitly  to  Rod 
erick,  but  Roderick  now  had  his  back  turned. 
He  had  approached  Christina,  who,  with  an  ab 
sent  air,  was  sitting  alone,  where  she  had  taken  her 
place  near  her  innocent  rival  to  watch  the  guests 
pass  out  of  the  room.  Her  face,  like  Mary's,  showed 
a  vague  afterglow,  but  only  as  an  intenser  radiance. 
Hearing  Roderick's  voice  she  looked  up  at  him 
sharply;  then  silently,  with  a  single  quick  gesture, 
she  motioned  him  away.  He  obeyed  her  and  came 

377 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

and  joined  his  mother  in  bidding  good-night  to 
Madame  Grandoni.  Christina  in  a  moment  met 
Rowland's  eyes  and  immediately  beckoned  him  to 
come  to  her.  He  was  familiar  with  her  peremptory 
way  and  was  not  particularly  surprised.  She  made 
a  place  for  him  on  the  sofa  beside  her;  he  wondered 
what  was  coming  now.  He  was  not  sure  it  was  not 
a  mere  fancy,  but  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  never 
seen  her  look  just  as  she  was  looking  then.  There 
was  a  high  mildness,  a  sweetness  of  humility  in  it 
which  threw  into  relief  the  rare  nature,  the  strange 
life  and  play,  of  her  beauty.  "How  many  more 
metamorphoses,"  he  asked  himself,  "am  I  to  be 
treated  to  before  we  have  done  ?" 

"I  want  to  tell  you,"  said  Christina,  "I  've  such 
a  beautiful  impression  of  Miss  Garland.  Are  n't 
you  glad  ?" 

"Quite  overjoyed,   madam,"   Rowland   returned. 

She  kept  her  eyes  on  him.  "Ah,  I  see  you  don't 
believe  a  word  of  it!" 

"Is  it  so  hard  to  believe?" 

"Not  that  people  in  general  should  admire  her,  but 
that  I  should.  I  'm  not  good  enough  —  that 's  what 
you  feel.  But  I  want  to  tell  you;  I  want  to  tell  some 
one;  I  can't  tell  Miss  Garland  herself.  She  regards 
me  already  as  a  horrid  false  creature,  and  if  I  were 
to  express  to  her  frankly  what  I  think  of  her  I  should 
simply  disgust  her.  She  would  be  quite  right;  she 
has  Repose,  and  from  that  point  of  view  I  and  my 
doings  must  seem  monstrous.  Unfortunately  I 
have  n't  Repose  —  ah,  what  would  n't  I  give  for 
it!  I  'm  trembling  now;  if  I  could  ask  you  to  feel 

378 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

my  arm  you  'd  see.  But  I  want  to  tell  you  that  I 
admire  Miss  Garland  more  than  any  of  the  people 
who  call  themselves  her  friends  —  except  of  course 
you.  Oh,  I  know  that!  To  begin  with  she  's  ex 
tremely  handsome  and  she  has  n't  the  least  idea 
of  it.  Now  that  by  itself,  you  know —  !" 

"She's  not  generally  thought  handsome,"  Row 
land  conscientiously  said. 

"Evidently!  That 's  the  vulgarity  of  the  taste  of 
the  rabble.  Her  head  has  great  character,  great 
natural  style.  If  a  woman  's  not  to  scream  out  from 
every  pore  that  she  has  an  appearance  —  which  is 
a  most  awful  fate  —  quite  the  best  thing  for  her 
is  to  carry  that  sort  of  dark  lantern.  On  occa 
sion  she  can  flash  it  as  far  as  she  likes.  She  '11  not 
be  thought  pretty  by  people  in  general  and  dese 
crated  as  she  passes  by  the  stare  of  every  vile  wretch 
who  chooses  to  thrust  his  nose  under  her  bonnet; 
but  a  certain  number  of  intelligent  people  will  find 
it  one  of  the  delightful  things  of  life  to  look  at  her. 
That  lot 's  as  good  as  another.  And  then  your  friend 
has  every  virtue  under  heaven." 

"You   found   that  out  soon,"  Rowland   laughed. 

"  How  long  did  it  take  you  ?  I  found  it  out  before 
I  ever  spoke  to  her.  I  met  her  the  other  week  in 
Saint  Peter's;  I  knew  it  then.  I  knew  it  —  do  you 
want  to  know  how  long  I  've  known  it  ?" 

"Really,"  said  Rowland,  "I  didn't  mean  to 
cross-examine  you." 

"Do  you  remember  mamma's  ball  in  Decem 
ber  ?  We  had  some  talk  and  you  then  mentioned 
her  —  not  by  name.  You  said  but  three  words,  but 

379 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

I  saw  you  admired  her  and  I  knew  that  if  you  ad 
mired  her  she  must  have  every  virtue  under  heaven. 
That 's  what  you  require." 

"Upon  my  word,"  he  declared,  "you  make  three 
words  go  very  far!" 

"Oh,  Mr.  Hudson  has  also  spoken  of  her." 

"Ah,  that's  better!"    said  Rowland. 

"I  don't  know.     He  does  n't  like  her." 

"Has  he  told  you  so?"  The  question  left  Row 
land's  lips  before  he  could  stay  it  —  which  he  would 
have  done  on  a  moment's  reflexion. 

Christina  looked  at  him  intently.  "Not  in  so  many 
words,"  she  said  at  last.  "That  would  have  been 
dishonourable,  would  n't  it  ?  But  I  know  it  from 
my  knowledge  of  him.  He  does  n't  like  perfection; 
he  's  not  bent  on  being  so  awfully  safe  and  sound 
in  his  likings;  he  's  willing  to  risk  something!  Poor 
dear  man,  he  risks  too  much!" 

Rowland  was  silent;  he  did  n't  care  for  the  thrust, 
but  he  was  profoundly  mystified.  Christina  beckoned 
to  her  poodle,  and  the  dog  marched  stiffly  across 
to  her.  She  gave  a  loving  twist  to  his  rose-coloured 
top-knot  and  bade  him  go  and  fetch  her  burnous. 
He  obeyed,  gathered  it  up  in  his  teeth  and  returned 
with  great  solemnity,  dragging  it  along  the  floor. 

"I  do  her  justice.  I  do  her  full  justice."  She 
wonderfully  kept  it  up.  "I  like  to  say  that,  I  like 
to  be  able  to  say  it.  She  's  full  of  intelligence  and 
courage  and  devotion.  She  does  n't  do  me  a  grain 
of  justice;  but  that 's  no  harm  —  I  mean  above  all 
no  harm  to  her.  There  's  something  so  noble  in  the 
aversions  of  a  good  woman!" 

380 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"If  you  would  give  Miss  Garland  a  chance," 
said  Rowland,  "  I  'm  sure  she  would  be  glad  to  be 
your  friend." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  a  chance?  She  has  only 
to  take  it.  I  told  her  I  liked  her  immensely,  and  she 
glared  as  if  I  had  said  something  disgusting.  She 
looks  magnificent  when  she  glares  —  like  a  Me 
dusa  crowned  not  with  snakes  but  with  a  tremor  of 
doves'  wings."  Christina  rose  with  these  words  and 
began  to  gather  her  mantle  about  her.  "  I  don't  often 
like  women  —  small  blame  to  me,"  she  went  on. 
"In  fact  I  generally  detest  'em.  But  I  should  like 
to  know  that  one  well.  I  should  like  to  have  a  friend 
ship  with  her;  I  have  never  had  one;  they  must  be 
very  delightful,  good  safe  friendships.  But  I  sha'n't 
have  one  now  —  not  if  she  can  help  it!  Ask  her 
what  she  thinks  of  me;  see  what  she  '11  say.  I 
don't  want  to  know;  keep  it  to  yourself.  It 's  too 
sad.  So  we  go  through  life.  It 's  fatality  —  that 's 
what  they  call  it,  is  n't  it  ?  We  make  the  most 
inconvenient  good  impression  on  people  we  don't 
care  for;  we  inspire  with  loathing  those  we  do. 
But  I  appreciate  her,  I  do  her  justice;  that 's  the 
most  important  thing.  It 's  because  I  've  after  all 
a  lot  of  imagination.  She  has  none.  Never  mind; 
it 's  her  only  fault.  Besides,  imagination  's  not  a 
virtue  —  it 's  a  vice.  I  do  her  justice;  I  under 
stand  very  well."  She  kept  softly  murmuring  and 
looking  about  for  Madame  Grandoni.  She  saw  the 
good  lady  near  the  door  and  put  out  her  hand  to 
Rowland  for  good-night.  She  held  his  hand  an 
instant,  fixing  him  with  her  eyes,  by  the  living 

381 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

splendour  of  which  he  was  momentarily  dazzled. 
"Yes,  I  do  her  justice,"  she  repeated.  "And  you  do 
her  more;  you  would  lay  down  your  life  for  her." 
With  this  she  turned  away  and  before  he  could 
answer  she  left  him.  She  went  to  Madame  Gran- 
doni,  grasped  her  two  hands  and  held  out  a  fore 
head  to  be  kissed.  The  next  moment  she  was  gone. 

"That  was  a  happy  accident!"  said  Madame 
Grandoni.  "She  never  looked  so  beautiful  and  she 
made  my  little  party  brilliant." 

"Beautiful  verily!"  Rowland  answered.  "But  it 
was  no  accident." 

"What  was  it  then  ?" 

"It  was  a  plan.  She  wanted  to  see  Mary  Garland. 
She  knew  she  was  to  be  here." 

"How  so?" 

"By  Roderick  evidently." 

"And  why  did  she  wish  to  see  her  ?" 

"Heaven  knows!    I  give  it  up." 

"Ah, the  bold  bad  girl!"  Madame  Grandoni  sighed. 

"No,"  said  Rowland;  "don't  say  that  now.  She  's 
too  beautiful." 

"Oh,  you  men  —  the  best  of  you!" 

"Well  then,"  cried  Rowland,  "she  's  too  good!" 


XX 

THE  opportunity  presenting  itself  the  next  day,  he 
failed  not,  as  you  may  imagine,  to  ask  Mary  Garland 
what  she  thought  of  Christina.  It  was  a  Saturday 
afternoon,  the  time  at  which  the  beautiful  marbles  of 
the  Villa  Borghese  are  thrown  open  to  the  public. 
Mary  had  told  him  that  Roderick  had  promised  to 
take  her  to  see  them  with  his  mother,  and  he  joined 
the  party  in  the  splendid  Casino.  The  warm  weather 
had  left  so  few  strangers  in  Rome  that  they  had  the 
place  to  almost  themselves.  Mrs.  Hudson  had  con 
fessed  to  an  invincible  fear  of  treading  even  with  the 
help  of  her  son's  arm  the  polished  marble  floors,  and 
was  sitting  patiently  on  a  stool,  with  folded  hands,  look 
ing  shyly  here  and  there  at  the  undraped  paganism 
around  her.  Roderick  had  sauntered  off  alone  with 
an  irritated  brow  which  seemed  to  betray  the  conflict 
between  the  instinct  of  observation  and  the  per 
plexities  of  circumstance.  His  cousin  was  astray  in 
another  direction,  and  if  Rowland  caught  her  with 
her  eyes  on  the  catalogue  he  explained  it  as  a  sign  of 
her  system  of  concealing  anxieties.  He  joined  her,  and 
she  presently  dropped  for  him  on  a  divan  and  rather 
wearily  closed  her  eternal  red  handbook.  Then  he 
asked  her  abruptly  how  Christina  had  pleased  her. 
She  started  the  least  bit  at  the  question,  and  he  felt 
she  had  been  thinking  of  Christina.  "I  don't  like 
her!"  she  dryly  said. 

383 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"What  do  you  think  of  her  ?" 
"  I  think  she  's  false."   It  quite  rang  out. 
"But  she  wished  to  please  you;   she  tried,"  Row 
land  rejoined  in  a  moment. 

"She  wished  above  all  to  please  herself!" 
He  was  silent  again,  held  a  moment  by  a  strange 
intensity  of  thought.  Yes,  this  young  woman  would 
never  be  anything  but  unjust  to  the  other  one,  and 
that  though  neither  had  a  vulgar  soul.  And  he  saw 
the  attitude  in  Mary  as  immutable  for  ever,  and 
Christina  was  interesting,  and  Mary  would  be  wrong. 
He  himself  could  take  it  thus  and  yet  not  "mind." 
How  little  with  her  there,  verily,  he  minded!  This 
came  and  went  in  fifty  seconds  —  leaving  all  the  rest, 
however,  not  less  distinct.  He  knew  that  his  com 
panion  knew,  by  that  infallible  sixth  sense  of  a  wo 
man  who  loves,  how  the  beautiful  strange  girl  she  had 
seen  for  the  first  time  at  Saint  Peter's  (since  when 
she  had  asked  no  question  about  her)  had  possibly 
the  power  to  do  her  a  definite  wrong.  To  what  extent 
she  had  the  will  remained  of  course  ambiguous,  and 
last  night's  interview  had  somehow,  by  a  perverse 
process,  only  proved  an  omen  of  ill.  It  was  in  these 
conditions  equally  unbecoming  for  Rowland  to  depre 
ciate  or  to  defend  Christina,  and  he  had  to  content 
himself  with  simply  having  verified  the  latter's  own 
assurance  that  she  had  made  a  bad  impression.  He 
tried  to  talk  of  indifferent  matters  —  about  the  statues 
and  the  frescoes;  but  to-day  plainly  the  quest  of 
elegant  knowledge  on  Mary's  part  had  folded  its 
wings.  Curiosity  of  another  sort  had  taken  its  place. 
She  was  longing,  he  was  sure,  to  break  ground  again 

384 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

on  the  subject  of  Christina;  but  she  found  a  dozen 
reasons  for  hesitating.  Her  questions  would  imply 
that  Roderick  had  not  treated  her  with  confidence; 
for  information  on  this  point  should  properly  have 
come  from  himself.  They  would  imply  that  she  was 
jealous,  and  to  betray  her  jealousy  was  intolerable  to 
her  pride.  For  some  minutes,  as  she  sat  pressing 
the  brilliant  pavement  with  the  point  of  her  um 
brella,  it  was  to  be  supposed  that  her  pride  and  her 
anxiety  held  an  earnest  debate.  At  last  anxiety  won. 

"About  Miss  Light  then,"  she  asked;  "do  you 
know  her  very  well  ?" 

"  I  can  hardly  say  that.  But  I  've  seen  her  re 
peatedly." 

"Do  you  like  her  very  much  ?" 

"Yes  and  no.    I  think  I  'm  sorry  for  her." 

Mary  had  spoken  with  her  eyes  on  the  pavement. 
At  this  she  looked  up.  "Sorry  for  her  ?  Why  ?" 

"Well  —  she  's  unhappy." 

"What  are  her  miseries?" 

"Well  —  she  has  a  horrible  mother  and  has  had 
a  wretched  bringing-up." 

For  a  moment  Mary  was  still.  Then  "  Is  n't  she 
very  beautiful  ?"  she  asked. 

"Don't  you  think  so  ?" 

"That's  measured  by  what  men  think!  She's 
extremely  clever  too." 

"Oh  yes  —  speaking  as  men  think'" 

"She  has  beautiful  dresses." 

"Any  number  of  them." 

"And  beautiful  manners." 

"Yes  —  sometimes." 

385 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"And  plenty  of  money." 

"Money  enough  apparently." 

"And  she  's  enormously  admired." 

"Oh,  enormously." 

"And  she  's  to  marry  a  grandee." 

"So  they  say." 

Mary  rose  and  turned  to  rejoin  her  companions, 
commenting  these  admissions  with  a  pregnant  si 
lence.  "Poor  Miss  Light!"  she  at  last  simply  said. 
But  it  went,  as  for  her  ironic  purpose,  very  far. 

Late  the  next  evening  his  servant  brought  him  the 
card  of  a  visitor.  He  was  surprised  at  so  nocturnal  a 
call,  but  it  may  be  said  that  when  he  read  the  inscrip 
tion  —  Cavaliere  Giuseppe  Giacosa  —  he  recognised 
the  working  of  events.  He  had  had  an  unnamed  pre 
vision  of  some  sequel  to  the  apparition  at  Madame 
Grandoni's  —  which  the  Cavaliere  would  have  come 
to  usher  in. 

He  had  come  evidently  on  a  portentous  errand.  He 
was  as  pale  as  some  livid  old  marble  mask  into  which 
he  might  have  suggested  that  a  pair  of  polished  agate 
eyes  had  been  for  an  occasion  inserted.  Prodigiously 
grave,  he  might  have  been  the  bearer  of  a  cartel,  had 
not  his  deep  deference  to  his  host  and  to  the  latter's 
general  situation  been  clearly  again  his  first  need. 

"  You  've  more  than  once  done  me  the  honour  to 
invite  me  to  call  upon  you,  and  I  'm  ashamed  of  my 
long  delay.  But  my  time  for  many  months  has  been 
particularly  little  my  own."  Rowland  assented,  un 
grudgingly,  fumbled  for  some  Italian  correlative  of 
"Better  late  than  never,"  begged  him  to  be  seated 
and  offered  him  a  cigar.  The  Cavaliere  sniffed  imper- 

386 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

ceptibly  the  fragant  weed  and  then  declared  that  if 
his  entertainer  would  allow  him  he  would  reserve  it 
for  consumption  at  another  time.  It  was  not  a  case, 
clearly,  for  hanging  up  smoke-wreaths.  "  I  must  con 
fess,"  he  said,  "that  even  now  I  come  on  business  not 
of  my  own  —  or  my  own  at  least  only  in  a  secondary 
sense.  I  've  been  despatched  as  an  ambassador  —  an 
envoy  extraordinary,  I  may  say  —  by  my  dear  friend 
Mrs.  Light." 

"  If  I  can  in  any  way  be  of  service  to  Mrs.  Light 
I  shall  much  rejoice,"  Rowland  found  himself  a  little 
recklessly  articulating. 

"Well  then,  dear  sir,  Casa  Light's  in  high  com 
motion.  The  povera  signora  's  in  great  trouble,  in 
terrible  trouble."  For  a  moment  Rowland  expected 
to  hear  that  the  povera  signora's  trouble  was  of  a 
nature  that  a  loan  of  five  thousand  francs  would 
assuage.  But  the  Cavaliere  was  more  interesting  even 
than  that.  "Miss  Light  has  committed  a  great  crime; 
she  has  plunged  a  dagger  into  the  heart  of  her 
mother." 

" A  dagger  — ?" 

The  Cavaliere  nervously  patted  the  air.  "I  speak 
strongly  —  one  must:  che  vuole  ?  She  has  broken 
off  her  marriage." 

"Broken  it  off?" 

"Short!  She  has  turned  the  Prince  out  of  the 
house."  And  the  good  gentleman,  with  this  report, 
folded  his  arms  and,  straight  at  his  friend,  looked 
strange,  the  strangest,  things.  A  mocking  little  light 
of  pride  might  have  glimmered  in  his  decent  despair. 

Rowland  greeted  the  news  with  a  gasp,  and  there 

387 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sounded  in  his  ears  the  sinister  click  as  of  a  fitting 
together  of  bad  pieces.  She  had  been  too  plausible  to 
be  honest.  Without  being  able  to  trace  the  connection, 
he  yet  instinctively  associated  her  present  rebellion 
with  her  meeting  of  Mary.  Sinister  it  thus  sud 
denly  showed,  her  exhibition  of  eager  mildness  at 
Madame  Grandoni's,  and  all  the  uneasiness  she  had 
then  stirred  in  him  came  back  with  a  chill.  Yes,  it 
was  clearer  than  it  was  obscure,  and  he  recognised 
in  the  stroke  now  startling  him  the  hand  armed  to 
deal  some  blow  at  Miss  Garland's  small  remnant  of 
security.  So  it  hung  before  him,  portentous  and  ugly. 
If  she  had  not  seen  Mary  she  would  have  let  things 
stand,  but  she  had  seen  her  and  she  had  acted.  It 
was  monstrous  indeed  to  suppose  that  she  could  have 
sacrificed  so  brilliant  a  fortune  to  a  mere  movement 
of  jealousy,  to  a  calculation  of  quite  futile  effects,  to 
a  desire  to  create  for  the  poor  girl  some  poisonous 
alarm.  Yet  he  remembered  his  first  impression  of  her; 
she  was  "dangerous,"  and  she  had  measured  in  each 
quarter  the  penetration  of  her  announced  rupture. 
She  hovered  there  for  him  as  tasting  that  strength  in 
it.  If  the  question  had  been  of  her  penetrating,  he, 
verily,  was  penetrated,  and  it  made  him  long,  for  a 
minute  that  was  as  sharp  as  a  knife-edge,  to  denounce 
her  to  her  face.  But  of  course  all  he  could  say  to  his 
visitor  was  that  he  was  extremely  sorry,  though  indeed 
he  was  not  surprised. 

"You  're  not  surprised  ?" 

"With  Miss  Light  everything's  possible.  Isn't 
that  true  ?" 

Another  ripple  seemed  to  play  an  instant  in  the 
388 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

current  of  the  old  man's  irony,  but  he  made  no 
answer.  "It  was  a  magnificent  marriage,"  he  said 
at  last.  "I  have  my  reserves  about  a  great  many 
people,  but  I  had  none  about  the  Signer  Principe." 

"I  should  judge  him  indeed  a  very  honourable 
young  man,"  said  Rowland. 

"  Eh,  young  as  he  is  he  's  made  of  the  old  stuff. 
And  now  perhaps  he  's  blowing  his  brains  out.  He  's 
the  last  of  his  house;  it 's  a  great  house.  But  Miss 
Light  will  have  made  it,  for  the  nonce,  feel  very 
small." 

"Is  that  what  she  has  wanted  to  do  ?" 

The  Cavaliere's  smile  was  like  the  red  tip  of  a 
cigar  seen  for  a  few  seconds  in  the  dark.  "You  've 
observed  Miss  Light  with  attention,"  he  said,  "and 
this  brings  me  to  my  errand.  Mrs.  Light  has  a  high 
opinion  of  your  wisdom,  of  your  kindness,  and  she 
has  reason  to  believe  you  've  great  influence  with 
her  daughter." 

"I  — with  her  daughter  ?    Not  a  grain!" 

"That's  possibly  your  modesty.  Mrs.  Light  be 
lieves  that  something  may  yet  be  done  and  that  our 
young  lady  will  listen  to  you  as  to  no  one.  She  begs 
you  therefore  to  come  and  see  her  before  it 's  too  late." 

"But  all  this,  my  dear  Cavaliere,  is  none  of  my 
business,"  Rowland  objected.  "I  can't  possibly 
in  such  a  matter  take  the  responsibility  of  advising 
Miss  Light." 

The  Cavaliere  fixed  his  eyes  for  a  moment  on  the 
floor,  in  brief  but  intense  reflection.  Then  looking 
up,  "Unfortunately,"  he  said,  "she  has  no  man  near 
her  whom  she  respects.  She  has  no  father." 

389 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"And  such  a  finished  fool  of  a  mother!"  Row 
land  gave  himself  the  satisfaction  of  exclaiming. 

The  Cavaliere  was  so  pale  that  he  could  not  easily 
have  turned  paler;  yet  it  seemed  for  a  moment  that 
his  dead  complexion  blanched.  "Eh,  signore,  such 
as  she  is  the  mother  appeals  to  you.  A  very  hand 
some  woman  —  dishevelled,  in  tears,  in  despair, 
literally  undressed,  uncombed  and  refusing  food." 
Rowland  reflected  a  moment,  not  on  the  attractions 
of  Mrs.  Light  in  the  guise  evoked  by  the  Cavaliere, 
but  on  the  relief  he  should  find  in  bringing  home 
to  Christina  her  damnable  need  of  making  mis 
chief. 

"I  must  add,"  said  the  Cavaliere,  "that  Mrs. 
Light  desires  also  to  speak  to  you  on  the  subject  of 
Mr.  Hudson." 

"She  believes  Mr.  Hudson  connected  with  this 
step  of  her  daughter's  ?" 

"Intimately.    He  must  be  got  out  of  Rome." 

"Mrs.  Light  then  must  get  an  order  from  the 
Pope  to  remove  him.  It 's  not  in  my  power." 

The  Cavaliere  showed  his  intelligence.  "Mrs. 
Light 's  equally  helpless.  She  would  leave  Rome 
to-morrow,  but  nothing  will  induce  Christina  to 
budge.  An  order  from  the  Pope  would  do  nothing. 
A  bull  in  council  would  do  nothing." 

"She's  really,"  said  Rowland,  "a  terrible  explo 
sive  force." 

But  the  Cavaliere  rose  —  he  responded  more 
coldly.  "She  has  a  great  spirit  —  the  very  greatest." 
And  it  seemed  to  Rowland  that  her  great  spirit,  for 
mysterious  reasons,  gave  him  more  pleasure  than  the 

39° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

distressing  use  she  made  of  it  gave  him  pain.  He  was 
on  the  point  of  charging  him  with  his  inconsistency 
when  the  good  gentleman  took  himself  up.  "But 
if  the  marriage  can  be  saved  it  must  be  saved.  It 's 
a  beautiful  marriage.  It  will  be  saved." 

"Notwithstanding  Miss  Light's  great  spirit  to  the 
contrary?" 

"Miss  Light,  notwithstanding  her  great  spirit, 
will  come  round  again  to  her  duty." 

"And  will  the  Signer  Principe  come  round?" 

"I  warrant  him!" 

"Well  then,"  said  Rowland,  "heaven  grant  our 
prayer!" 

"Oh,  we  must  help  heaven!"  And  with  Row 
land's  promise  to  present  himself  on  the  morrow  at 
Casa  Light  his  visitor  departed.  He  left  our  friend 
revolving  many  things:  Christina's  magnanimity, 
Christina's  perversity,  Roderick's  contingent  for 
tune,  Mary  Garland's  certain  misery  and  the  Cava- 
liere's  own  fine  ambiguities. 

Rowland's  present  vow  obliged  him  to  disen 
gage  himself  from  an  excursion  which  he  had 
arranged  with  the  two  ladies  at  the  inn.  Before 

O 

going  to  Casa  Light  he  repaired  in  person  to  that 
establishment.  He  found  Roderick's  mother  seated 
with  tearful  eyes,  staring  at  an  open  note  that  lay 
in  her  lap.  At  the  window  hovered  Mary,  who 
turned  on  him  as  he  entered  a  gaze  both  anxious 
and  confident.  Mrs.  Hudson  quickly  rose  and  came 
to  him,  holding  out  the  note. 

"  In  pity's  name  what 's  the  matter  with  my  boy  ? 
If  he  's  ill  I  entreat  you  to  take  me  to  him!" 

39  * 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"He's  not  ill,  to  my  knowledge,"  Rowland  said. 
"What  have  you  there  ?" 

"A  note  —  a  most  dreadful  thing.  He  tells  us 
we  're  not  to  see  him  nor  to  think  of  him  for  a  week. 
If  I  could  only  go  to  his  room!  But  I  'm  afraid, 
I'm  afraid!"  ' 

"I  imagine  there  's  no  need  of  going  to  his  room. 
What 's  the  occasion,  may  I  ask,  of  his  note  ?" 

"  He  was  to  have  gone  with  us  on  this  drive  to  — 
what  is  the  place  ?  —  to  Cervara.  You  know  it  was 
arranged  yesterday  morning.  In  the  evening  he 
was  to  have  dined  with  us.  But  he  never  came,  and 
this  morning  arrives  this  awfulness.  Oh  dear,  I  'm 
so  nervous.  Would  you  mind  reading  it  ?" 

Rowland  took  the  note  and  glanced  at  its  half- 
dozen  lines.  "I  mustn't  go  to  Cervara,"  they  ran; 
"I  have  something  else  to  do.  This  will  occupy  me 
perhaps  a  week,  so  you  won't  see  me.  Don't  talk 
about  me  too  much  and  don't  miss  me.  Learn  not 
to  miss  me.  I  bless  you  both,  but  I  know  what  I 
need  and  must  insist  on  my  conditions.  R.  H." 

"Why,  it  means,"  Rowland  explained,  "that  he 
has  taken  up  a  fresh  piece  of  work  and  that  it  's 
all-absorbing.  That 's  very  good  news."  This  ex 
planation  was  not  sincere,  but  he  had  not  the  cour 
age  not  to  offer  it  as  a  stop-gap.  And  he  found  he 
needed  all  his  courage  to  support  it,  for  Mary  had 
left  her  place  and  approached  him,  formidably  un 
satisfied. 

"He  never  works  in  the  evening,"  said  Mrs.  Hud 
son.  "  Can't  he  come  for  five  minutes  ?  Why  does 
he  write  such  a  cruel  cold  note  to  his  poor  mother 

392 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

—  to  poor  Mary  ?  What  have  we  done  that  he  acts 
so  strangely  ?  It 's  this  wicked,  infectious,  heathen 
ish  place!"  And  the  poor  lady's  suppressed  mis 
trust  of  the  Eternal  City  broke  passionately  out. 
"Oh,  dear  Mr.  Mallet,"  she  went  on,  "I'm  sure 
it 's  this  poisonous  air,  that  the  fever  's  on  him  and 
that  he  's  already  delirious." 

"  I  'm  very  sure  it 's  not  that,"  Mary  distinctly 
protested. 

She  was  still  fixing  Rowland,  so  that  his  eyes  met 
hers  and  his  own  glance  wandered  away.  This 
made  him  angry,  and  to  carry  off  his  confusion  he 
pretended  to  be  looking  meditatively  at  the  floor. 
After  all,  what  had  he  to  be  ashamed  of?  For  a  mo 
ment  he  was  on  the  point  of  making  a  clean  breast 
of  it,  of  crying  out  "Good  ladies,  I  abdicate;  I  can't 
help  you!"  But  he  checked  himself;  he  felt  so  im 
patient  to  have  his  three  words  with  Christina.  He 
grasped  his  hat.  "  I  '11  see  what  it  is  and  let  you 
know."  And  then  he  was  glad  he  had  not  abdicated, 
for  as  he  turned  away  he  glanced  again  at  Mary  and 
saw  that,  though  her  face  was  full  of  apprehensions, 
it  was  not  hard  and  accusing,  but  charged  with  ap 
pealing  friendship. 

He  went  straight  to  Roderick's  apartment,  deeming 
this,  at  an  early  hour,  the  safest  place  to  seek  him. 
He  found  him  in  his  sitting-room,  which  had  been 
closely  darkened  to  keep  out  the  heat.  The  carpets 
and  rugs  had  been  removed,  the  floor  of  speckled 
concrete  was  bare  and  lightly  sprinkled  with  water. 
Here  and  there,  over  it,  certain  strongly-odorous 
flowers  had  been  scattered.  Roderick  was  lying  on 

393 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

his  divan  in  a  white  dressing-gown,  staring  at  the 
frescoed  ceiling.  The  room  was  deliciously  cool  and 
filled  with  the  moist  sweet  fragrance  of  the  circum 
jacent  roses  and  violets.  These  were  somehow 
"quaint"  notes,  yet  Rowland  hardly  felt  surprised. 

"Your  mother  was  greatly  alarmed  at  your  note," 
he  said,  "and  I  came  to  satisfy  myself  that,  as  I 
believed,  you  're  not  ill." 

Roderick  lay  motionless  except  that  he  slightly 
turned  his  head  towards  his  friend.  He  was  smell 
ing  a  large  white  rose,  which  he  continued  to  pre 
sent  to  his  nose.  In  the  darkness  of  the  room  he 
looked  exceedingly  pale,  but  his  beautiful  eyes  quite 
shed  a  light.  He  let  them  rest  for  some  time  on  Row 
land,  lying  there  like  a  Buddhist  in  an  intellectual 
swoon,  a  deep  dreamer  whose  perception  should 
be  slowly  ebbing  back  to  temporal  matters.  "Oh, 
I  'm  not  ill,"  he  said  at  last.  "I  've  never  been  better 
in  my  life." 

"Your  note,  nevertheless,  and  your  announced 
absence,  have  very  naturally  alarmed  your  mother. 
I  advise  you  to  go  to  her  directly  and  reassure 
her." 

"  Go  to  her  ?    Going  to  her  would  be  worse  than 
staying  away.     Staying  away  at  present  is  a  kind 
ness."    And  he  inhaled  deeply  his  huge  rose,  look 
ing  up  over  it  at  Rowland.    "My  presence,  in  fact, 
would  be  indecent." 

"  Indecent  ?    Pray  explain." 

"Why,  you  see,  as  regards  Mary  Garland.  I  'm 
disgustingly  happy.  Does  n't  it  strike  you  ?  You 
ought  to  agree  with  me.  You  wish  me  to  spare  her 

394 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

feelings;    I  spare  them  by  staying  away.     Last  night 
I  heard  something  — " 

"  I  heard  it  too,"  Rowland  said  with  a  high  inten 
tion  of  dryness.  "And  it 's  in  honour  of  this  piece  of 
news  that  you  've  taken  to  your  bed  in  this  fashion  ?" 

"Extremes  meet!    I  can't  get  up  for  joy." 

"  May  I  enquire  how  you  heard  what  has  given  you 
such  pleasure  ?  From  Miss  Light  herself?" 

"  By  no  means.  It  was  brought  me  by  her  maid, 
who  's  in  my  service  as  well." 

"The  Prince's  loss  then  is  to  such  a  certainty  your 
own  gain  ? " 

"I  don't  talk  about  certainties.  I  don't  want  to  be 
arrogant.  I  don't  want  to  offend  the  immortal  gods. 
I  'm  keeping  very  quiet  and  behaving,  I  maintain,  as 
a  gentleman  should.  But  I  can't  help  my  deep  peace. 
I  shall  wait  a  while.  I  shall  bide  my  time." 

"And  then?" 

"And  then  the  most  interesting  person  in  the  world 
—  in  my  world  —  will  confess  to  me  that  when  she 
threw  overboard  her  Prince  she  remembered  that  I 
adore  her." 

"  I  feel  bound  to  tell  you,"  was  in  the  course  of  a 
moment  Rowland's  response  to  this  speech,  "that 
I  'm  now  on  my  way  to  Mrs.  Light's." 

"  I  congratulate  you  —  I  envy  you,"  Roderick  im- 
perturbably  remarked. 

"Mrs.  Light  has  sent  for  me  to  remonstrate  with 
her  daughter,  with  whom  she  has  taken  it  into  her 
head  that  I  have  an  influence.  I  don't  know  to  what 
extent  I  shall  remonstrate,  but  I  give  you  notice  I 
shall  not  speak  in  your  interest." 

395 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Roderick  looked  at  him  for  a  moment  with  a  lazy 
radiance.  "Pray  don't!"  he  simply  answered. 

"You  deserve  I  should  tell  her  you're  a  very  shabby 
fellow." 

"My  dear  Rowland,  the  comfort  with  you  is  that 
I  can  so  beautifully  trust  you.  You  're  incapable  of 
doing  anything  the  least  tiny  bit  indelicate." 

"You  mean  to  lie  here  then  smelling  your  roses 
and  nursing  your  visions  and  leaving  your  mother  and 
Miss  Garland  to  eat  their  hearts  out  ?" 

"  Can  I  go  and  flaunt  my  felicity  in  their  faces  ? 
Wait  till  I  get  used  to  it  a  trifle.  I  've  done  them 
a  villainous  wrong,  but  I  can  at  least  forbear  to  add 
insult  to  injury.  I  may  be  the  biggest  donkey,  or 
the  blackest  monster,  in  Rome,  but  for  the  moment 
I  have  taken  it  into  my  head  to  be  glad  to  be  alive. 
I  should  n't  be  able  to  keep  it  from  them;  my  being 
glad,  or  even  my  being  alive,  on  such  a  basis,  would 
mortally  scandalise  them.  So  I  lock  myself  up  as  a 
dangerous  character." 

"Well,  I  can  only  hope  that  your  gladness  may  not 
grow  less  or  your  danger  greater." 

Roderick  closed  his  eyes  again  and  sniffed  at  his 
rose.  "God's  will  be  done!" 

On  this  Rowland  left  him  and  repaired  directly  to 
Mrs.  Light's.  This  afflicted  lady  hurried  forward  to 
meet  him.  Since  the  Cavaliere's  visit  to  Rowland  she 
had  taken  a  reef,  as  the  saying  is,  in  her  distress,  but 
she  was  evidently  still  in  high  agitation  and  she 
clutched  Rowland  by  his  two  hands  as  if  in  the  ship 
wreck  of  her  hopes  he  were  her  single  floating  spar. 
Rowland  greatly  pitied  her  —  so  respectable  is  sin- 

396 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

cerity  of  sorrow.  She  too  was  in  the  blighting  circle  of 
her  daughter's  contact,  and  this  exposure,  shared  with 
the  others  who  were  more  interesting,  almost  gave 
her,  with  the  crudity  of  her  candour,  something  of 
their  dignity. 

"  Speak  to  her,  plead  with  her,  don't  leave  her  till 
you  've  moved  her!"  she  cried,  pressing  and  shaking 
his  hands.  "She  '11  not  heed  us,  no  more  than  if  we 
were  a  pair  of  running  fountains.  Perhaps  she  '11 
listen  to  you;  she  always  liked  you." 

"She  always  disliked  me,"  said  Rowland.  "But 
that  does  n't  matter  now.  I  Ve  come  here  simply 
because  you  sent  for  me  —  not  because  I  can  help  you. 
I  can't  advise  your  daughter." 

"Oh,  if  you  think  I  'm  going  to  take  that  from 
you  — !  You  must  advise  her;  you  sha'n't  leave  this 
house  till  you  've  advised  her!"  the  poor  woman 
passionately  retorted.  "Look  at  me  in  my  misery 
and  refuse  to  help  me!  You  need  n't  be  afraid, 
I  know  I  'm  a  fright,  I  have  n't  an  idea  what  I  've 
on.  If  this  goes  on  she  and  I  may  both  as  well  turn 
scarecrows.  If  ever  a  woman  was  desperate  and 
heartbroken,  such  a  woman  speaks  to  you  now! 
I  can't  begin  to  tell  you.  To  have  nourished  a  ser 
pent,  sir,  all  these  years!  To  have  lavished  one's 
self  upon  a  viper  that  turns  and  stings  her  own 
devoted  mother!  To  have  toiled  and  prayed,  to 
have  pushed  and  struggled,  to  have  eaten  the  bread 
of  bitterness  and  gone  through  fire  and  water  — 
and  at  the  end  of  all  things  to  find  myself  at  this 
pass!  It  can't  be,  it's  too  cruel,  such  things  don't 
happen,  the  Lord  don't  allow  it.  I  'm  a  religious 

397 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

woman,  sir,  and  if  the  Saints  above  don't  know 
all  about  me  it  is  n't  my  fault.  But  had  n't  they, 
with  their  own  very  hands,  just  given  me  their  re 
ward  ?  I  would  have  lain  down  in  the  dust  and  let 
her  walk  over  me;  I  would  have  given  her  the  eyes 
out  of  my  head  if  she  had  taken  a  fancy  to  them.  No, 
she's  a  cruel,  wicked,  heartless,  unnatural  girl!  I 
speak  to  you,  Mr.  Mallet,  in  my  dire  distress,  as  to 
my  only  friend.  There  is  n't  a  creature  here  that  I  can 
look  to  —  not  one  of  them  all  that  I  have  faith  in. 
But  I  always  thought  everything  of  you.  I  said  to 
Christina  the  first  time  I  saw  you  that  you  were  a 
perfect  gentleman,  a  real  one  —  different  enough 
from  some  I  could  name!  Come,  don't  disappoint 
me  now!  I  feel  so  terribly  alone,  you  see;  I  feel  what 
a  nasty  hard  heartless  world  it  is  that  has  come  and 
devoured  my  dinners  and  danced  to  my  fiddles  and 
yet  that  has  n't  a  word  to  throw  to  me  in  my  trouble. 
The  mere  money  I  've  spent,  all  round,  to  do  it  —  I 
could  speak  of  that  too  if  I  cared !" 

While  this  high  tide  was  flowing  Rowland  had  had 
time  to  look  round  the  room  and  to  see  the  Cavaliere 
sitting  in  a  corner,  like  a  major-domo  on  the  divan  of 
an  ante-chamber,  pale,  rigid,  inscrutable.  "I  have  it 
at  heart  to  tell  you,"  he  said,  "that  if  you  consider 
my  friend  Hudson  — " 

Mrs.  Light  gave  a  toss  of  her  head  and  hands.  "  Oh, 
it 's  not  that!  She  told  me  last  night  to  bother  her  no 
longer  with  Hudson.  Hudson,  forsooth !  She  did  n't 
care  a  button  for  Hudson.  I  almost  wish  she  did;  then 
perhaps  one  might  understand  it.  But  she  does  n't 
care  for  anything  in  the  wide  world  except  to  do  her 

398 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

own  hard  wicked  will  and  to  crush  me  and  shame  me 
with  her  cruelty." 

"Ah  then,"  said  Rowland,  "I  'm  as  much  at  sea 
as  you,  and  my  presence  here  's  an  impertinence.  I 
should  like  to  say  three  words  to  Miss  Light  on  my 
own  account.  But  I  must  wholly  decline  to  talk  to 
her  about  the  Prince.  This  is  simply  impossible." 

Mrs.  Light  burst  into  angry  tears.  "Because  the 
poor  boy  is  a  prince,  eh  ?  because  he  's  of  a  great 
family  and  has  an  income  of  millions,  eh  ?  That 's 
why  you  begrudge  him  and  stand  off  from  him  and 
won't  lift  a  finger  for  him.  I  knew  there  were  vulgar 
people  of  that  way  of  feeling,  but  I  did  n't  expect  it  of 
you.  Make  an  effort,  Mr.  Mallet;  rise  to  the  occasion; 
forgive  the  poor  darling  his  advantages.  Be  just,  be 
reasonable!  It's  not  his  fault,  and  it's  not  mine. 
Pray,  has  n't  he  human  feelings  and  is  n't  he  horribly 
suffering  ?  He  's  the  best,  the  truest,  the  kindest 
young  man  in  Italy  and  the  most  correct  and  culti 
vated  and  incapable  of  a  thought  — !  If  he  were  stand 
ing  here  in  rags  I  would  say  it  all  the  same.  The  man 
first  —  the  money  afterwards :  that  was  always  my 
motto  —  ask  the  Cavaliere.  What  do  you  take  me 
for  ?  Do  you  suppose  I  would  give  Christina  to  a 
vicious  person  ?  do  you  suppose  I  would  sacrifice  my 
precious  child,  little  comfort  as  I  have  in  her,  to  a  man 
against  whose  character  a  syllable  could  be  breathed  ? 
Casamassima  's  only  too  good,  too  innocently  good; 
he  's  a  saint  of  saints;  his  word  is  his  word  and  he 
understands  nothing  else.  There  is  n't  such  another 
in  the  length  and  breadth  of  Europe.  What  he  has 
been  through  in  this  house  not  a  common  peasant 

399 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

would  endure.  Christina  has  treated  him  as  you 
would  n't  treat  a  dog.  He  has  been  dealt  with  as  if  to 
see  how  much  of  it  he  would  take.  He  has  been  driven 
hither  and  thither  till  he  did  n't  know  where  he  was. 
He  has  stood  there  where  you  stand  —  there,  with  his 
name  and  his  millions  and  his  devotion  —  as  white  as 
your  handkerchief,  with  hot  tears  in  his  eyes  and  me 
ready  to  go  down  on  my  knees  to  him  and  say  'My 
own  sweet  Prince,  I  could  kiss  the  ground  you  tread 
on,  but  it  is  n't  decent  that  I  should  allow  you  to 
enter  my  house  and  expose  yourself  to  these  horrors 
again/  And  he  would  come  back,  and  he  would  come 
back,  and  go  through  it  all  again,  and  take  all  that 
was  given  him,  and  only  want  the  girl  the  more.  He 
opened  himself  to  me  as  he  might  to  his  mother  in 
heaven,  and  it 's  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  lived 
through  everything  together.  He  used  to  beg  my  own 
forgiveness  for  her  worst  caprices.  What  do  you  say  to 
that  ?  I  seized  him  once  and  kissed  him  hard,  I  verily 
did!  To  find  that  and  to  find  all  the  rest  with  it,  and 
to  believe  that  luck  was  at  last,  in  spite  of  everything, 
on  my  side,  and  then  to  see  it  dashed  away  before  my 
eyes  and  to  stand  here  helpless  —  oh,  it 's  a  fate  I 
hope  you  may  ever  be  spared!" 

"  It  would  seem  then  that  in  the  interest  of  Prince 
Casamassima  himself  I  ought  to  refuse  to  interfere," 
Rowland  presently  said. 

Mrs.  Light  looked  at  him  hard,  slowly  drying  her 
eyes.  The  magnificence  of  her  woe  gave  her  a  kind  of 
majesty,  and  Rowland  for  the  moment  felt  ashamed 
of  the  somewhat  grim  humour  of  his  observation. 
"Very  good,  sir,"  she  said.  "I  'm  sorry  your  heart 

400 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

is  n't  so  tender  as  your  conscience.  My  compliments 
to  your  conscience!  It  must  give  you  great  happiness. 
Of  course  it 's  your  own  affair.  Since  you  fail  us 
we  're  indeed  driven  to  the  wall.  But  I  've  fought  my 
own  battles  before  and  have  never  really  lost  courage, 
so  I  don't  see  why  I  should  break  down  now.  Cava- 
liere,  come  here!"  That  personage  rose  at  her  sum 
mons  and  stood  impenetrably  at  attention.  He  had 
shaken  hands  with  Rowland  in  silence.  "Mr.  Mallet 
refuses  to  say  a  word,"  Mrs.  Light  went  on.  "Time 
presses,  every  minute  's  precious.  God  only  knows 
what  that  poor  boy  may  be  doing.  If  at  this  moment 
a  truly  clever  woman  should  get  hold  of  him  it 
would  n't  matter  if  she  were  a  fright:  it  would  be  her 
grand  chance.  It 's  horrible  to  think  of." 

The  Cavaliere  fixed  his  eyes  on  Rowland,  and 
his  expression,  which  the  night  before  had  been 
singular,  was  now  extraordinary  in  its  mixture  of 
fine  anxiety  —  an  anxiety  that  seemed  to  plead 
against  the  young  man's  reluctance  —  and  of  some 
emotion  of  a  bearing  less  calculable.  Suddenly  and 
vaguely  Rowland  felt  the  presence  of  a  new  active 
element  in  the  situation  that  had  been  made  a  drama 
somehow  by  Christina's  having  been  made,  so  all 
generically,  a  heroine.  It  was  as  if  a  subordinate 
performer  had  suddenly  advanced  to  the  footlights. 
He  looked  from  their  companion  to  Mrs.  Light, 
whose  tears  had  been  succeeded  by  a  grand  air  of 
detachment. 

"  If  you  could  bring  yourself,"  the  Cavaliere  said 
with  all  his  grave  rich  unction  and  with  the  effect, 
in  his  fine  Roman  voice,  as  of  a  round-hand  copy  set 

401 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  a  pupil,  "if  you  could  bring  yourself  to  ad 
dress  a  few  words  of  solemn  remonstrance  to  Miss 
Light  you  would  perhaps  do  more  for  us  than  you 
know.  You  would  save  several  persons  a  great  deal 
of  pain.  This  gracious  lady  here  first  and  then 
Christina  herself.  Christina  in  particular.  Me  too, 
I  might  take  the  liberty  to  add!" 

Rowland  felt  these  words,  after  an  instant,  press 
upon  his  heart  as  with  a  repetition  of  discreet 
and  intense  finger-taps.  To  the  personage  so  ur 
banely  sounding  them  his  imagination  had  from  the 
first  all  benevolently  attached  itself,  and  they  now 
seemed  a  supreme  manifestation  of  the  mysterious 
obliquity  of  his  life.  On  the  spot  something  sharply 
occurred  to  him;  it  was  something  very  odd  and  it 
stayed  his  glance  from  again  turning  to  Mrs.  Light. 
His  idea  embarrassed  him,  and  to  carry  off  his  em 
barrassment  he  repeated  that  it  was  folly  to  sup 
pose  his  counsel  would  have  any  weight  with  their 
young  friend. 

The  Cavaliere  stepped  forward  and  laid  two 
fingers,  as  for  positive  emphasis  of  the  effect  Row 
land  had  already  figured,  on  his  interlocutor's  breast. 
"  Do  you  wish  to  know  the  truth  of  the  case  ?  You  're 
the  only  man  whose  words  she  ever  repeats." 

Rowland  was  moving  from  one  new  light  to  another. 
"I  '11  say  then  what  I  can!"  By  this  time  he  had 
again  caught  Mrs.  Light's  conscious  eyes,  which 
appeared  to  accuse  him  for  an  instant  of  possible 
defection. 

"If  you  fail,"  she  said  sharply,  "there's  some 
thing  else  we  can  do.  But  for  God's  sake  be  straight!" 

402 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

She  had  hardly  spoken  when  the  sound  of  a  short 
sharp  growl  caused  the  company  to  turn.  Chris 
tina's  pompous  poodle  stood  in  the  middle  of  the 
great  drawing-room  with  his  nose  raised  as  if  to 
sniff  conspiracy.  He  had  preceded  his  mistress  as 
the  sharpest  of  scouts,  and  she  now  slowly  advanced 
from  a  neighbouring  place. 

"You  will  be  so  good  as  to  listen  to  Mr.  Mallet," 
her  mother  promptly  rang  out,  "and  to  reflect  care 
fully  on  what  he  says.  I  suppose  you  '11  admit  that 
he  's  disinterested.  In  half  an  hour  you  shall  hear 
from  me  again!"  And  her  retreat  with  her  com 
panion  might  have  been  the  march  of  a  squad  that 
has  changed  guard. 

Christina  looked  hard  at  Rowland,  but  offered 
him  no  greeting.  She  was  very  pale,  and,  strangely 
enough,  it  at  first  seemed  to  Rowland  that  her  beauty 
was  in  eclipse.  But  he  recognised  more  than  ever 
that  its  shadows  were  as  fine  as  its  lights  and  that 
attempted  discussion  would  always  have  it  to  reckon 
with.  "Why  have  you  come  here  at  this  time?" 
she  asked. 

"Your  mother  sent  for  me  in  pressing  terms,  and 
I  was  very  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  speak  to 
you." 

"Have  you  come  to  help  me  or  to  worry  me?" 

"  I  've  as  little  power  to  do  one  as  I  've  desire  to 
do  the  other.  I  came  in  great  part  to  ask  you  a  ques 
tion.  First,  is  your  determination  absolutely  taken  ?" 

Christina's  two  hands  had  been  hanging  clasped  in 
front  of  her;  she  separated  them  and  flung  them 
apart  by  an  admirable  gesture. 

403 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Would  you  have  done  this  if  you  had  not  seen 
a  certain  person  ?" 

"What  person?" 

"The  young  lady  you  so  much  admire." 

She  looked  at  him  with  quickened  attention; 
then  suddenly,  "This  is  really  interesting,"  she  ex 
claimed.  "Let  us  see  what's  in  it."  And  she  flung 
herself  into  a  chair  and  pointed  to  another. 

"You  don't  answer  my  question,"  Rowland  said. 

"You  've  no  right  that  I  know  of  to  ask  it.  But 
it 's  very  intelligent  —  it  puts  such  a  lot  into  it. 
Into  my  having  seen  her,  I  mean."  She  paused  a 
moment;  then  with  her  eyes  on  him,  "  She  helped 
me  certainly,"  she  went  on. 

"  Provoked  you,  you  mean,  to  hurt  her  —  through 
Roderick  ? " 

For  a  moment  she  deeply  coloured,  and  he  had 
really  not  intended  to  force  the  tears  to  her  eyes. 
A  cold  clearness,  however,  quickly  forced  them 
back.  "I  see  your  train  of  reasoning,  but  it 's  really 
all  wrong.  I  meant  no  harm  whatever  to  Miss  Gar 
land;  I  should  be  extremely  sorry  to  cause  her  any 
distress.  Tell  me  that,  since  I  assure  you  of  that, 
you  believe  it." 

"How  am  I  to  tell  you,"  he  asked  in  a  moment, 
"that  I  don't?" 

"And  yet  your  idea  of  an  inward  connexion  be 
tween  our  meeting  and  what  has  happened  since 
corresponds  to  something  that  has  been,  for  me, 
an  inward  reality.  I  took  into  my  head,  as  I  told 
you,"  Christina  continued,  "to  be  greatly  struck 
with  Miss  Garland  (since  that's  her  sweet  name!) 

404 


and  I  frankly  confess  that  I  was  tormented,  that  I 
was  moved  to  envy,  call  it,  if  you  like,  to  jealousy, 
by  something  I  found  in  her.  There  came  to  me 
there  in  five  minutes  the  sense  of  her  character. 
C'est  bien  beau,  you  know,  a  character  like  that,  and 
I  got  it  full  in  the  face.  It  made  me  say  to  myself 
'She  in  my  place  would  never  marry  Gennaro  — 
no,  no,  no,  never!'  I  could  n't  help  coming  back 
to  it,  and  I  thought  of  it  so  often  that  I  found  a  kind 
of  inspiration  in  it.  I  hated  the  idea  of  being  worse 
than  she  —  of  doing  something  that  she  would  n't 
do.  I  might  be  bad  by  nature,  but  I  need  n't  be  by 
reflexion.  The  end  of  it  all  was  that  I  found  it  im 
possible  not  to  tell  the  Prince  that  I  was  his  very 
humble  servant,  but  that  decidedly  I  could  n't  take 
him  for  mine." 

"Are  you  sure  it  was  only  of  Miss  Garland's 
character  that  you  were  jealous,"  Rowland  asked, 
"and  not  of  her  affection  for  her  cousin  ?" 

"Sure  is  a  good  deal  to  say.    Still,  I  think  I  may 
do  so.    There  are  two  reasons;   one  at  least  I  can 
tell  you.     Her  affection  has  not  a  shadow's  weight 
with  Mr.  Hudson!   Why  then  should  one  resent  it  ?" 
"And  what 's  the  other  reason  ?" 
"Excuse  me;    that's  my  own  affair." 
Rowland  felt  himself  puzzled,  baffled,  charmed, 
inspired.      "I  've  promised  your  mother,"   he  pre 
sently  went  on,  "to  do    my  best  on  behalf  of  the 
Prince." 

She  shook  her  head  sadly.  "The  Prince  needs 
nothing  you  can  say  for  him.  He  's  a  magnificent 
parti.  I  know  it  perfectly." 

405 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"You  know  also  of  your  mother's  deep  disap 
pointment  ?" 

"Her  disappointment's  demonstrative.  She  has 
been  abusing  me  for  the  last  twenty-four  hours  as 
if  I  were  the  vilest  of  the  vile"  —  a  statement  to 
which  the  purity  of  the  girl's  beauty  gave  a  high 
dramatic  value.  "  I  've  failed  of  respect  to  her  at 
other  times,  but  I  've  not  done  so  now.  How  is  it 
failing  of  respect  to  have  found  out  at  last,  once  for 
all,  and  with  terrible  trouble  and  pain,  by  how  much 
too  little  I  care  for  the  person  she  wishes  to  force 
upon  me  —  by  how  much  too  much  I  don't  care  for 
him  ?  I  tried  —  I  've  been  trying  for  months  —  I 
went  as  far  as  I  could.  And  I  liked  what  he 
offered  me,  liked  it  immensely  —  if  I  could  have 
had  it  without  him.  But  to  let  him  think  he  pleased 
or  satisfied  me  too  —  or  ever  would  —  that  de 
ception  struck  me  finally  as  too  base.  I  know,  I  feel 
in  all  my  bones,  nevertheless,  what  I  give  up;  so 
that  to  be  clear  —  clear  about  my  innermost  feeling 
of  all,  and  about  that  only  —  has  n't  been,  I  assure 
you,  child's  play.  I  was  looking  for  inspiration, 
if  you  like;  and  I  found  it  —  well,  I  found  it,"  she 
went  on,  "where  I  could.  Shall  I  tell  you?"  she 
demanded  with  sudden  ardour;  "will  you  under 
stand  me  ?  It  was  on  the  one  side  the  world,  the 
splendid,  beautiful,  powerful,  interesting  world.  I 
know  what  that  is;  I  've  tasted  of  the  cup;  I  like  its 
sweetness.  Ah,  if  I  chose,  if  I  should  let  myself  go, 
if  I  should  fling  everything  to  the  winds,  the  world 
and  I  would  be  famous  friends.  I  know  its  merits, 
and  I  think  without  vanity  it  would  feel  mine.  You 

406 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

should  see  some  fruits  of  the  alliance.  I  should  like 
to  be  a  grandee  —  the  Prince  is,  among  many  won 
derful  things  hereditary  Grand  d'Espagne  —  and 
I  think  I  should  be  a  very  good  one;  I  would  play 
my  part  well.  I  'm  fond  of  luxury,  I  'm  fond  of  a 
great  society,  I  'm  fond  of  being  looked  at,  I  thrill 
with  the  idea  of  high  consideration.  Mamma,  you 
see,  has  never  had  any.  There  I  am  in  all  my 
native  horror.  I  'm  corrupt,  corrupting,  corrup 
tion!  Ah,  what  a  pity  that  could  n't  be  too!  Mercy 
of  heaven!"  Her  voice  had  a  convulsion;  she  cov 
ered  her  face  with  her  hands  and  sat  motionless. 
Rowland  saw  that  an  intense  agitation,  hitherto 
successfully  repressed,  underlay  her  fine  pretence 
of  finality,  and  he  could  easily  believe  her  battle  had 
been  fierce.  She  rose  quickly  and  turned  away, 
walked  a  few  paces  and  stopped.  In  a  moment  she 
was  before  him  again,  her  air  confessing  at  once  to 
her  pride  and  her  humility.  "But  you  need  n't  think 
I'm  afraid!"  she  said.  "I've  chosen,  and  I  shall 
hold  to  it.  I  Ve  something  here,  here,  here!"  and 
she  patted  her  heart.  "It 's  my  own.  I  sha'n't  part 
with  it.  Is  it  what  you  call  in  Boston  one's  higher 
self?  I  don't  know;  I  don't  care!  It's  bigger  and 
brighter  than  the  Casamassima  diamonds  —  every 
one  of  which,  if  you  please,  I  've  seen  and  handled 
and  adored." 

"  You  say  that  certain  things  are  your  own  affair," 
Rowland  presently  rejoined;  "but  I  must  neverthe 
less  make  an  attempt  to  learn  what  all  this  means  — 
what  it  promises  for  my  friend  Hudson.  Is  there  any 
hope  for  him  ?" 

407 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"This  's  a  point  I  can't  discuss  with  you  minutely. 
I  like  him  very  much." 

"Would  you  marry  him  if  he  were  to  ask  you?" 

"He  has  asked  me." 

"And  if  he  should  ask  again  ?" 

"I  shall  marry  no  one  just  now." 

"Roderick,"  said  Rowland,  "has  been  wonderfully 
affected.  He  appears  much  exalted." 

"He  knows  then  of  my  rupture  ?" 

"He  's  making  a  great  holiday  of  it." 

Christina  pulled  her  poodle  towards  her  and  began 
to  retouch  his  beauty.  "I  like  him  very  much,"  she 
repeated;  "much  more  than  I  used  to.  Since  you 
told  me  all  that  about  him  at  Saint  Cecilia's  I  've 
felt  a  great  friendship  for  him.  //  nest  ni  banal  ni 
bete;  and  then  there  's  nothing  in  life  he  's  afraid  of. 
He  's  not  afraid  of  failure;  he  's  not  afraid  of  ruin  or 
death." 

Rowland  had  a  stare  —  he  indeed  had  a  chill  — 
for  this  singular  description.  "Oh,  he  's  a  romantic 
figure!" 

"  A  romantic  figure,  yes;  the  most  romantic  I  Ve 
ever  met,  I  think  —  and  with  the  charm  of  coming, 
so  oddly,  from  your  awful  country.  There  are 
things  in  one  to  which  it  makes  him  quite  sharply 
appeal." 

"  Yet  your  mother,"  Rowland  objected,  "  told  me 
just  now  that  you  say  you  don't  care  a  button  for 
him." 

"Very  likely!  I  meant  as  an  amoureux.  One 
does  n't  want  a  lover  one  pities,  and  one  does  n't  want 
—  of  all  things  in  the  world  —  a  husband  who  's  a 

408 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

picturesque  curiosity.  The  Prince  himself  is,  in  his 
own  way,  almost  that.  I  should  like  Mr.  Hudson  as 
something  else.  The  world's  idea  of  possible  relations, 
either  for  man  or  woman,  is  so  poor  —  there  would  be 
so  many  nice  free  ones.  I  wish  he  were  even  my 
brother,  so  that  he  could  never  talk  to  me  of  marriage. 
Then  I  could  adore  him.  I  would  nurse  him,  I  would 
wait  on  him  and  save  him  all  disagreeable  rubs  and 
shocks.  I  'm  much  stronger  than  he,  and  I  would 
stand  between  him  and  the  world.  Indeed  with  Mr. 
Hudson  for  my  brother  I  should  be  willing  to  live  and 
die  an  old  maid." 

"Have  you  ever  expressed  to  him  these  sentiments  ?" 
"  I  dare  say.    I  've  chattered  to  him  like  a  magpie. 
If  you  wish  I  '11  put  it  to  him  formally  —  so  he  '11 
know  a  quoi  s1  en  tenir." 

"There's  nothing  I  could  wish  less!"  Rowland 
promptly  replied.  "The  one  thing  I  ask  of  you  is  to 
let  him  alone." 

"  Good,"  said  the  girl.  "  I  make  a  note  of  it." 
He  was  lingering  there,  weighing  one  impression 
against  another,  weighing  sympathy  against  sus 
picion  and  feeling  it  sink  the  scale,  when  the  curtain  of 
a  distant  doorway  was  lifted  and  Mrs.  Light  passed 
across  the  room.  She  stopped  half-way  and  rather 
grimly  took  in  our  interlocutors.  Sniffing  the  air  for 
the  powder  of  the  battle,  she  perhaps  too  much  missed 
the  scent  as  she  moved  away  with  a  passionate  toss  of 
her  drapery.  Rowland's  previous  impression  came 
back  to  him:  he  saw  her  somehow  possessed  of  some 
obscure  and  odious,  some  wholly  ungenerous  advan 
tage,  a  means  of  influence  too  base  to  be  used  save 

409 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

under  sharp  coercion.  She  might,  to  his  fancy,  at  that 
moment,  have  had  this  furbished  weapon  concealed 
in  the  folds  of  her  not  particularly  fresh  wrapper. 
Christina,  meanwhile,  had  really  for  the  time  been 
soaring  aloft,  to  his  vision,  and  though  in  such  flights 
of  her  moral  nature  —  the  energy  of  which  now 
affected  him  as  real  —  there  was  a  certain  painful 
effort  and  tension  of  wing,  it  was  none  the  less  piteous 
to  imagine  her  being  rudely  jerked  down  to  the  base 
earth.  She  would  need  all  her  magnanimity  for  her 
own  contest,  and  there  was  grossness  in  his  making 
other  demands  upon  it. 

He  took  up  his  hat.  "You  asked  a  while  ago  if  I 
had  come  to  help  you.  If  I  knew  how  I  might  help 
you  I  should  be  particularly  glad." 

She  stood  a  moment  thinking.  Then  at  last  looking 
up:  "You  remember  your  promising  six  months  ago 
to  tell  me  what  you  should  finally  think  of  me  ?  I 
should  like  you  to  tell  me  now." 

Ah,  this  pressed  the  spring,  and  his  inward  irony, 
for  himself,  gave  a  hum!  Madame  Grandoni  had 
insisted  on  the  fact  that  she  was  an  actress,  and  this 
little  speech  seemed  a  glimpse  of  the  cothurnus.  She 
had  played  her  great  scene,  she  had  made  her  point, 
and  now  she  had  her  eye  at  the  hole  in  the  curtain  and 
she  was  watching  the  house.  But  she  blushed  as  she 
guessed  his  fine  comment,  and  her  blush,  which  was 
beautiful,  carried  off  her  betrayal.  He  turned  his  back. 
There  was  a  great  chain  of  rooms  in  Mrs.  Light's 
apartment,  the  pride  and  joy  of  the  hostess  on  festal 
evenings,  through  which  the  departing  visitor  passed 
before  reaching  the  door,  and  in  one  of  the  first  of 

410 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

these  he  found  himself  waylaid  and  arrested  by  the 
distracted  mistress  of  the  house. 

"Well,  well  ?"  she  cried,  seizing  his  arm.  "Has  she 
listened  to  you  —  have  you  moved  her  ?" 

"Hadn't  you  better,  dear  madam,"  Rowland 
rather  ruefully  asked,  "  leave  the  poor  girl  alone  ? 
She  's  doing  —  for  herself,  I  mean  —  the  best  she 
can." 

"  For  herself  ?"  the  wretched  woman  shrieked.  "  Is 
that  what  I  asked  you  to  find  out  ? — as  if  we  did  n't 
know  enough  about  it!  Pray,  what  is  she  doing  for 
me  and  for  him  ?  —  and  what  have  you  been  doing 
for  either  of  us  ?"  And  then  as  he  had  nothing 
but  his  blankness  to  show  her  she  turned  upon  him 
with  fury.  "I  believe  you  came,  perfidiously,  but 
to  back  her  up,  and  you  're  conspiring  with  her  to 
kill  me." 

Rowland  tried  for  a  moment,  with  small  taste  for 
the  job,  to  appease  her  unreason  and  persuade  her  that 
if  she  would  stay  her  wrath  she  might  gain  something 
by  patience.  This  however,  too  visibly,  was  a  counsel 
of  perfection,  and  she  broke  away  from  him  in  un- 
diminished  disgust,  leaving  him  to  come  an  instant 
later  upon  the  Cavaliere,  who  was  sitting  with  his 
elbows  on  his  knees  and  his  head  in  his  hands,  so 
buried  in  thought  that  he  had  to  call  him  before 
he  roused  himself.  The  poor  gentleman's  eyes  then 
charged  themselves  heavily  with  his  question,  but 
Rowland  could  again  only  throw  up  his  hands.  "  Mrs. 
Light,  all  the  same,  seems  to  have  an  idea  she  can 
still  do  something;  so  that  if  you  believe  in  Mrs. 
Light's  idea—!" 

411 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  Cavaliere  stood  a  moment  in  deep  gloom.  "  I 
always  believe  in  Mrs.  Light's  ideas.  It 's  a  magni 
ficent  marriage.  The  girl  should  be  reasonable." 

"Ah,"  Rowland  sighed,  "if  you  Ve  a  way  to  make 
her  that—I" 

"It  will  make  her  either  that — " 

"Or  it  will  dish  you  altogether?"  Rowland  asked 
as  he  hesitated. 

The  old  man's  face  probed  a  moment  the  con 
sciousness  from  which  this  question  had  sprung. 
"Pray  for  her,  dear  sir,"  he  at  last  simply  said. 

"I  '11  pray  for  you,  Cavaliere,"  Rowland  answered 
as  he  went. 

He  had  become  aware  of  Mrs.  Light's  renewed 
approach  and  he  slipped  straight  away.  Yes,  it  was 
after  this  some  providential  support  to  her  vague 
coadjutor  that  he  found  himself  most  invoking. 


XXI 

OF  Roderick  meanwhile  he  saw  nothing;  but  he  im 
mediately  went  to  Mrs.  Hudson  and  assured  her  that 
her  son  was  in  even  exceptionally  good  health  and 
spirits.  After  this  he  called  again  on  his  two  country 
women,  but  as  Roderick's  absence  continued  he  was 
able  neither  to  dispense  much  comfort  nor  to  feign 
much  conviction.  Mary's  tense  smoothness  —  a 
serenity  with  a  surface  like  slippery  ice  and  from 
which  any  vain  remark  rebounded  with  its  heels  in 
the  air  —  seemed  to  him  an  image  of  his  own  state 
of  mind.  He  was  deeply  depressed,  he  felt  a  real 
storm  in  the  wind  and  wished  it  would  come  and  wash 
away  their  troubles.  On  the  afternoon  of  the  third 
day  he  pushed  into  Saint  Peter's,  in  whose  vast  clear 
element  the  hardest  particles  of  thought  ever  infallibly 
entered  into  solution.  From  a  heartache  to  a  Roman 
rain  there  were  few  contrarieties  the  great  church  did 
not  help  him  to  forget.  He  had  wandered  there  for 
half  an  hour  when  he  came  upon  a  short  figure  lurking 
in  the  shadow  of  one  of  the  piers.  He  saw  it  was  that 
of  an  artist  hastily  transferring  to  his  sketch-book  the 
sense  of  some  emphasised  instant,  there,  of  the  im 
mense  procession  of  the  hours;  and  in  a  moment  he 
perceived  the  artist  to  be  little  Sam  Singleton. 

Singleton  pocketed  his  notes  with  a  guilty  air,  as  if 
he  had  been  caught  picking  a  rose  in  a  royal  conserva 
tory  or  lighting  his  cigarette  at  the  lamp  of  a  shrine. 

413 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  always  enjoyed  meeting  him;  talking  with 
him  in  these  days  was  as  good  as  a  wayside  gush  of 
clear  cold  water  on  a  long  hot  walk.  There  was  per 
haps  no  drinking-vessel,  and  you  had  to  apply  your 
lips  to  some  informal  conduit;  but  the  result  was 
always  a  sense  of  extreme  moral  refreshment.  On  this 
occasion  he  mentally  blessed  his  ingenuous  friend  and 
heard  presently  with  regret  that  he  was  to  leave  Rome 
on  the  morrow.  Singleton  had  come  to  take  leave 
of  the  great  basilica,  where  he  was  gathering  a  few 
last  impressions.  He  had  earned  a  pocketful  of  money 
and  was  meaning  to  take  a  summer's  holiday;  going 
to  Switzerland,  to  Germany,  to  Paris.  In  the  autumn 
he  was  to  return  home;  his  family  —  composed,  as 
Rowland  knew,  of  a  father,  who  was  cashier  in  a  bank, 
and  five  unmarried  sisters,  one  of  whom  gave  lyceum 
lectures  on  woman's  rights,  the  whole  resident  at 
Buffalo,  N.  Y.  —  had  been  writing  him  peremptory 
letters  and  appealing  to  him  as  son,  brother  and 
fellow-citizen.  He  would  have  been  grateful  for 
another  year  in  Rome,  but  he  submitted  to  fate  the 
more  patiently  that  he  had  laid  up  treasure  which  at 
Buffalo  would  seem  infinite.  They  talked  some  time; 
Rowland  hoped  they  might  meet  in  Switzerland  and 
take  a  walk  or  two  together.  Singleton  seemed  to  feel 
that  Buffalo  had  marked  him  for  her  own;  he  was 
afraid  he  should  not  see  Rome  again  for  many  a  year. 

"So  you  expect  to  live  at  Buffalo?"  Rowland 
enquired  as  they  looked  down  the  splendid  avenue  of 
the  nave. 

"  Well,  it  will  depend  upon  the  views  —  upon  the 
attitude  —  of  my  family.  Oh,  I  think  I  shall  get  on; 

414 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

I  think  it  can  be  done,"  Singleton  went  on.  "  If  I  find 
it  can  be  done  I  shall  really  be  quite  proud  of  it;  as 
an  artist,  of  course  I  mean,  don't  you  know  ?  Do  you 
know  I  've  some  nine  hundred  sketches  ?  I  shall  live 
in  my  portfolio.  And  so  long  as  one  's  not  in  Rome, 
pray  what  does  it  matter  where  one  is  ?  But  how  I 
shall  envy  all  you  Romans  —  you  and  Mr.  Gloriani 
and  Mr.  Hudson  in  particular.'* 

"Don't  envy  Hudson;  he  has  nothing  to  envy," 
Rowland  could  n't  help  risking. 

Singleton  wondered  —  but  it  might  be  a  harmless 
jest.  "  Why,  is  n't  he  going  to  be  the  great  man  of  our 
time  ?  And  is  n't  it  quite  a  treat  to  think  that  it 's 
we  who  have  turned  him  out  ?" 

Rowland's  heart  was  full,  and  the  tender  touch  of 
this  personage  made  it  overflow  a  little  where  a  harder 
knock  might  have  steadied  it.  "  Between  ourselves, 
since  you  ask,  he  has  rather  disappointed  me." 

Singleton  stared  open-mouthed.  "Dear  me  then, 
what  did  you  expect?" 

"Verily,"  Rowland  said  to  himself,  "what  did  I 
expect  ?" 

"I  confess,"  Singleton  pursued,  "I  can't  judge 
him  rationally.  He  fascinates  me;  he  's  the  sort  of 
man  one  makes  one's  hero  of." 

"Strictly  speaking,  he  's  not  a  positive  ideal  hero," 
Rowland  remarked. 

Singleton  looked  intensely  grave,  and  with  almost 
scared  eyes,  "Is  there  anything  amiss  with  him,  any 
thing  there  should  n't  be  ?"  he  timidly  asked.  Then 
as  Rowland  hesitated  to  reply  he  quickly  added: 
"Please,  if  there  is,  don't  tell  me!  I  want  to  know  no 

415 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

evil  of  him,  and  I  think  I  should  hardly  believe  it. 
In  my  memories  of  this  Roman  artist  life  he  will  be 
the  central  figure.  He  will  stand  there  in  extraordin 
ary  high  relief,  as  beautiful  and  clear  and  complete 
as  one  of  his  own  statues!" 

"Amen!"  said  Rowland  gravely.  He  remembered 
afresh  that  the  sea  is  inhabited  by  big  fishes  and  little, 
and  that  the  latter  often  find  their  way  down  the 
throats  of  the  former.  Singleton  was  going  to  spend 
the  afternoon  in  taking  last  looks  at  certain  other 
places,  and  Rowland  offered  to  join  him  on  his  senti 
mental  circuit.  But  as  they  were  preparing  to  leave 
the  church  he  heard  himself  suddenly  addressed  from 
behind.  Turning,  he  beheld  a  young  woman  whom 
he  immediately  recognised  as  Madame  Grandoni's 
maid.  Her  mistress  was  on  the  spot,  she  said,  and 
begged  to  confer  with  him  before  he  departed. 

This  summons  obliged  Rowland  to  separate  from 
Singleton,  to  whom  he  bade  farewell.  He  followed 
the  messenger  and  presently  found  Madame  Gran- 
doni  in  possession  of  rather  more  than  a  mere  pil 
grim's  portion  of  the  steps  of  the  tribune  behind 
the  great  altar,  where,  spreading  a  shawl  on  the  pol 
ished  red  marble,  she  had  spaciously  seated  herself. 
He  suspected  that  she  had  been  nursing  a  germ 
of  truth  and  she  lost  no  time  in  bringing  forth  her 
treasure. 

"Don't  shout  very  loud,"  she  said;  "remember  that 
we  're  in  church:  there  's  a  limit  to  the  noise  one  may 
make  even  in  Saint  Peter's.  Christina  Light  was 
married  this  morning  to  her  Prince — or  at  least  to  her 
mother's." 

416 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  exhaled  a  long  breath.  "Married  —  this 
morning  ?" 

"Married  this  morning,  at  seven  o'clock,  le  plus 
tranqmllement  du  monde,  before  three  or  four  persons. 
The  young  couple  left  Rome  an  hour  afterwards." 

For  some  moments  this  seemed  to  him  really 
terrible;  the  obscure  little  drama  of  which  he  had 
caught  a  glimpse  had  played  itself  almost  violently 
out.  He  had  believed  that  Christina  would  resist; 
that  she  had  succumbed  was  a  proof  that  the  way 
taken  with  her  had  had  some  last  dire  directness. 
His  excited  vision  followed  her,  with  much  blinking, 
into  the  world  toward  which  she  was  rolling  away 
with  her  unappreciated  husband  and  her  stifled  ideal; 
but  it  must  be  confessed  that  if  the  first  impulse  of  his 
compassion  was  for  Christina  the  second  was  now  for 
Prince  Casamassima.  Madame  Grandoni  acknow 
ledged  an  extreme  curiosity  as  to  the  secret  springs  of 
these  strange  doings  —  Casamassima's  sudden  dis 
missal,  his  still  more  sudden  recall,  the  hurried 
private  marriage.  "Listen,"  said  Rowland  pre 
sently,  "and  I  will  tell  you  something."*  And  he 
related  in  detail  his  last  visit  to  Mrs.  Light  and  his 
talk  with  this  lady,  with  Christina,  and  with  the 
Cavaliere. 

"Good,"  she  said;  " it 's  all  very  curious.  But  it 's 
a  riddle,  and  I  only  half  guess  it." 

"Well,"  said  Rowland,  "it 's  all  none  of  my  busi 
ness,  and  perhaps  I  see  things  melodramatically.  But 
certain  suppositions  have  taken  shape  in  my  mind 
which  serve  as  answers  to  two  or  three  riddles." 

"It 's  very  true,"  Madame  Grandoni  replied,  "that 
417 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

the  Cavaliere,  as  he  stands,  has  always  needed  to  be 
explained." 

"He  's  explained  by  the  hypothesis  that  four-and- 
twenty  years  ago,  at  Ancona,  Mrs.  Light  had  a  lover." 

"I  see.  Ancona  was  dull,  Mrs.  Light  was  lively, 
and  —  four-and-twenty  years  ago  perhaps  —  the 
Cavaliere  was  dangerous.  Such  are  the  dangers  of 
dull  places.  Poverino!" 

"He  has  had  his  compensation,"  Rowland  said. 
"  It  has  been  a  life  for  him  to  be  near  Christina. 
What  other  life  could  he  have  had  ?" 

"What  indeed  ?  But  has  the  girl  never  wondered 
why  hers  should  have  had  to  have  so  much  of  him? " 

"If  she  had  been  near  guessing,"  Rowland  re 
plied,  "her  mother's  high  way  with  him  would  have 
put  her  off  the  trace.  Mrs.  Light's  view  has  appar 
ently  been  that  she  could  minimise  her  fault  by 
minimising  her  lover.  She  has  lived  it  down  by  liv 
ing  him  down,  and  so  she  has  kept  her  secret.  But 
what 's  the  profit  of  a  secret  —  as  a  secret !  — 
unless  you  can  make  some  use  of  it  ?  The  day  at 
last  came  when  she  could  turn  hers  to  account;  she 
could  let  the  skeleton  out  of  the  closet  and  produce 
an  effect  with  it." 

"I  don't  understand." 

"Neither  do  I,  morally,"  said  Rowland.  "I  only 
conceive  that  there  was  an  odious,  dangerous,  des 
perate,  a  very  possibly  vain,  but,  as  it  has  turned 
out  for  her,  quite  successful  scene.  The  poor  Cava 
liere  stood  outside,  at  the  door,  as  livid  as  a  corpse 
and  as  dumb.  The  mother  and  daughter  had  it  out 
together.  Mrs.  Light  burned  her  ships.  When  she 

418 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

came  out  she  had  three  lines  of  writing  in  her  daugh 
ter's  hand,  which  the  Cavaliere  was  despatched 
with  to  the  Prince.  They  overtook  the  young  man 
in  time,  and  when  he  reappeared  he  was  delighted 
to  dispense  with  further  waiting.  I  don't  know  what 
he  thought  of  the  grand  manner  of  his  bride's  amends 
to  him;  but  that 's  how  I  roughly  reconstruct  his 
tory." 

"You  mean  her  mother  told  her  —  ?"  The  old 
lady  wondered.  "  I  don't  really  see  the  difference 
that  that  was  to  make  to  her." 

"Well,"  said  Rowland  "it  was  to  make  the  dif 
ference  of  her  deciding  that  she  could  n't  afford  not 
really  to  place  herself.  I  've  figured  it  out,  you  see. 
She  had  to  knock  under  to  a  revelation  —  to  an  hu 
miliation.  She  was  shown  that  it  was  not  for  her  to 
make  conditions,  but  to  thank  her  stars  that  there 
were  none  made  for  her.  If  she  persisted  she  might 
find  it  coming  to  pass  that  there  would  be  condi 
tions,  and  the  formal  rupture  —  the  rupture  that 
the  world  would  hear  of  and  pry  into  —  would  then 
have  proceeded  from  the  Prince  and  not  from  her." 

Madame  Grandoni  thought  of  these  things.  "  But 
must  n't  Christina  have  long  ago  guessed  ?" 

"Her  mother  appears  to  have  been  satisfied  she 
had  n't." 

"People  in  this  enlightened  age  don't  mind  that 
sort  of  thing,"  Madame  Grandoni  objected.  "The 
old  obloquy  attaching  to  irregular  birth  is  now  mere 
stage  convention  and  melodrama." 

"Well,  Christina  has  a  taste  for  that  —  she  was 
glad  immediately  to  be  able  to  see  herself  in  a  new 

419 


RODERICK     HUDSON 

high  light.  You  and  I  don't  *  mind,'  but  I  can  easily 
put  myself  in  the  place  of  the  proudest  girl  in  the 
world,  deeply  wounded  in  her  pride  and  not  stopping 
to  calculate  probabilities,  but  muffling  her  wound 
with  an  almost  sensuous  relief  in  a  splendour  that 
stood  within  her  grasp  and  would  cover  everything. 
Is  it  not  possible  that  the  late  Mr.  Light  had  made 
an  outbreak  before  witnesses  who  are  still  living?  — 
that  the  child's  coming  into  the  world  was  in  itself  a 
scandal  ?  Say  Light  had  quarrelled  with  his  wife  and 
was  at  the  time  virtually  separated  from  her.  Say 
too,"  Rowland  went  on,  "that  it  quite  imaginably 
came  home  to  her  —  this  first  of  all  appeals  from 
her  father  as  a  father." 

"  Ah,  she  won't  have  liked  him  for  that ! "  Madame 
Grandoni  declared.  "Her  being  the  Cavaliere's 
daughter  must,  if  she  had  really  been  ignorant,  have 
been  a  stiff  dose  for  her  to  swallow." 

"A  reason  the  more  then  for  her  consenting  to 
become  grand!" 

The  old  woman  got  up  at  last,  resuming  her  pro 
gress  and  her  sense  of  the  situation.  "Well,  she  has 
done  what  she  was  to  do.  She  was  nobly  to  decline 
it — yet  not  to  miss  it.  Which  would  have  been  a  pity." 

It  threw  Rowland,  as  they  went,  into  meditation 
again.  "Yes,  she  clearly  wasn't  made  to  miss!" 

He  called  on  the  evening  of  the  morrow  upon  Mrs. 
Hudson  and  found  Roderick  with  the  two  ladies. 
Their  companion  seemed  to  have  but  lately  joined 
them,  and  Rowland  afterwards  learned  that  it  was 
his  first  appearance  since  the  writing  of  the  note 
which  had  so  distressed  his  mother.  He  had  dropped 

420 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

upon  a  sofa,  where  he  lounged  like  a  young  Pasha 
bored  with  a  state  seraglio;  greeting  Rowland  with 
hardly  more  form  than  if  he  had  been  one  of  the 
usual  guards  of  such  penetralia.  The  manner  of  his 
advent  had  visibly  not  been  happy;  Mrs.  Hudson 
had  seated  herself  near  him  in  mute  appeal,  while 
Mary  was  sunk,  up  to  her  firm  chin,  in  one  of  her 
eternal  pretexts  for  the  fine  needle  and  the  occupied 
attention. 

Mrs.  Hudson,  however,  instantly  broke  out  to 
Rowland.  "Oh,  we  have  such  comfortable  news! 
Roderick  's  now  ready  to  leave  Rome." 

"  It  is  n't  decent  to  be  too  glad,"  said  Roderick. 
"There  is  n't  a  harm  this  place  can  do  us,  or  has 
done  us,  that  has  n't  had  something  in  it  we  shall 
ache  for  again  in  some  better  one." 

She  had  but  a  wan  stare  for  this  perversity.  "  If 
you  mean  we  shall  never  get  over  it  —  perhaps!  And 
the  proof  may  very  well  be  in  your  looking  so  pulled 
down  —  whatever  that  may  mean!  Isn't  he,  Mr. 
Mallet,  too  thin  to  live  ?  It  shows  in  all  your  bones 
that  you  need  a  change.  I  'm  sure  we  '11  go  wher 
ever  in  the  world  you  like.  Where  should  you  like 
to  go?" 

Roderick  had  let  her  take  his  hand,  which  she 
pressed  tenderly  in  her  own,  but  he  looked  at  her 
from  terribly  far  off.  "Poor  sweet  old  mother!", 
he  said  at  last  all  gently,  if  very  inconclusively. 

"My  own  dear  precious  son!"  Mrs.  Hudson  as 
responsively  and  as  vaguely  wailed. 

"  I  don't  care  a  straw  where  you  go !  I  don't  care 
a  straw  for  anything!" 

421 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  my  dear  boy,"  she  remonstrated,  "you 
must  n't  say  that  before  us  all  here  —  before  Mary, 
before  Mr.  Mallet!" 

"  Mary  —  Mr.  Mallet  ?"  He  took  up  these  names 
as  after  a  long  disuse  and  seemed  to  look  at  them 
as  at  objects  of  obscure  application.  Then  he  re 
leased  himself  from  his  mother's  locked  clasp  and 
turned  away,  leaning  his  elbows  on  his  knees  and 
holding  his  head  in  his  hands.  There  was  a  silence, 
Rowland's  share  in  which  was  the  intensity  of  his 
consciousness  of  the  young  woman  at  the  window. 
"Why  should  I  stand  on  ceremony  with  Mary  and 
Mr.  Mallet  ?"  Roderick  presently  demanded.  "Mary 
pretends  to  believe  I  'm  a  great  man,  and  if  she  be 
lieves  it  as  she  ought  nothing  I  can  say  will  alter 
her  opinion.  Mallet  knows  I  'm  a  hopeless  humbug; 
so  I  need  n't  mince  my  words  with  him.1' 

"Ah  my  dear,  don't  use  such  dreadful  language!' 
Mrs.   Hudson  quavered.      "Aren't  we  all   devoted 
to  you,  and  proud  of  you,  and  waiting  only  to  hear 
what  you  want,  so  that  we  may  do  it  ?" 

Roderick  had  got  up  and  he  began  to  walk  about 
the  room;  Rowland  felt  how  as  never  yet  there  was 
something  reckless  in  him  to  count  with.  He  ob 
served  further,  with  all  anxiety,  that  Mrs.  Hudson, 
without  a  sense  of  the  delicate  ground  under  her 
feet,  was  disposed  to  chide  him  endearingly,  to  show 
the  intimacy  of  her  tenderness.  He  foresaw  that  she 
would  bring  down  the  hovering  thunderbolt  on  her 
head. 

"Ah,  in  God's  name,"  Roderick  in  fact  broke  out, 
"  don't  remind  me  of  my  obligations !  It 's  intoler- 

422 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

able  to  me,  and  I  don't  believe  it 's  pleasant  to  Mallet. 
I  know  they  're  tremendous  —  I  know  I  shall  never 
repay  them.  I  'm  bankrupt,  bankrupt!  Do  you 
know  what  that  means  ?" 

The  poor  lady  gazed  in  dismay,  and  Rowland 
sharply  interfered.  "Oh,  spare  your  mother  your 
wild  figures !  Don't  you  see  you  're  frightening  her 
half  to  death  ?" 

"  Frightening  her  ?  She  may  as  well  then  be 
frightened  first  as  last.  Do  I  frighten  you,  mother  ?" 

"Oh,  Roderick,  what  do  you  mean?"  she  im 
patiently  whimpered.  "Mr.  Mallet,  what 's  he  talk 
ing  about  ?" 

"I'm  talking  about  this,"  Roderick  replied  — 
"that  I  'm  an  angry,  savage,  disappointed,  miser 
able  man.  I  mean  that  I  can't  do  a  stroke  of  work 
nor  think  a  profitable  thought.  I  mean  that  I  'm 
in  a  state  of  helpless  rage  and  grief  and  shame. 
Helpless,  helpless  —  that 's  what  it  is.  You  can't 
help  me,  poor  mother  —  not  with  kisses  nor  tears 
nor  prayers.  Mary  can't  help  me  —  not  for  all  the 
honour  she  does  me  nor  all  the  big  books  on  art  that 
she  pores  over.  Mallet  can't  help  me  —  not  with 
all  his  money  nor  all  his  good  example  nor  all  his 
friendship,  which  I  'm  so  immensely  well  aware  of: 
not  with  all  it  multiplied  a  thousand  times  and  re 
peated  to  all  eternity.  I  thought  you  would  help 
me,  you  and  Mary;  that 's  why  I  sent  for  you.  But 
you  can't  —  don't  think  it!  The  sooner  you  give 
up  the  idea  the  better  for  you.  Give  up  being  proud 
of  me  too;  there  's  nothing  left  of  me  to  be  proud 
of.  A  year  or  two  ago  I  don't  say,  for  I  myself  then 

423 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

really  believed  I  was  a  swell.  But  do  you  know  what 
has  become  of  me  now  ?  I  've  gone  utterly  to  the 
devil." 

There  was  something  in  the  ring  of  his  voice  as 
he  uttered  these  words  which  sent  them  home  with 
convincing  force.  He  was  not  talking  for  effect  or 
for  the  mere  personal  pleasure  of  extravagant  and 
paradoxical  utterance,  as  had  often  enough  been 
the  case  ere  this;  he  was  not  even  talking  viciously 
or  ill-humouredly.  He  was  talking  passionately, 
desperately,  sincerely,  from  an  irresistible  need  to 
throw  off  the  oppressive  burden  of  his  mother's 
confidence.  His  cruel  eloquence  brought  the  poor 
lady  to  her  feet,  and  she  stood  there  with  clasped 
hands,  petrified  and  voiceless.  Mary  Garland 
quickly  left  her  place  and,  coming  straight  to  him 
and  laying  her  hand  on  his  arm,  let  her  eyes  fix  him 
with  an  effort  of  influence  of  which  she  seemed  now 
to  wish  to  test  for  the  first  time  the  real,  the  sov 
ereign  power.  But  the  power  proved  the  mere  weak 
fumble  of  a  key  in  a  lock  too  hard  for  it;  he  made 
no  movement  to  disengage  himself,  but  it  was  as 
if  he  wondered  for  the  moment  what  she  could  want. 
Rowland  had  been  living  for  the  past  month  in  such 
intolerable  expectancy  of  disaster  that,  now  that  the 
ice  was  broken  and  the  fatal  cold  splash  adminis 
tered,  his  foremost  feeling  on  receiving  his  share  of 
the  spray  was  almost  elation.  But  the  next  instant 
his  eternal  second  thought,  his  vision  of  the  case  for 
others,  had  corrected  it. 

"I  really  don't  make  out,"  he  observed,  "the 
profit  of  your  talking  in  just  this  way  at  just  this 

424 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

time.  Don't  you  see  how  you  're  making  your  mother 
suffer?" 

"Do  I  enjoy  it  myself?"  cried  Roderick.  "Is  the 
suffering  all  on  your  side  and  theirs  ?  Do  I  look  as  if 
I  were  happy  and  were  stirring  you  up  with  a  stick  for 
my  amusement  ?  Here  we  all  are  in  the  same  boat;  we 
might  as  well  understand  each  other.  These  women 
must  know  that  I  'm  not  to  be  counted  on.  That 
has  a  sound  of  the  last  impudence,  no  doubt,  and  I 
certainly  don't  deny  your  right  to  be  disgusted  with 
me." 

"Will  you  keep  what  you  've  got  to  say  till  another 
time,"  said  Mary,  "  and  let  me  hear  it  alone  ?" 

"Oh,  I  '11  let  you  hear  it  as  often  as  you  please;  but 
what 's  the  use  of  keeping  it  ?  I  'm  in  the  humour 
now;  it  won't  keep!  It 's  a  very  simple  matter  —  it 
is  n't  worth  keeping.  I  'm  a  dead  failure,  that 's  all; 
I  'm  not  a  first-rate  man.  I  'm  second-rate,  tenth-rate, 
anything  you  please.  After  that  it 's  all  one!" 

Mary  turned  away  and  buried  her  face  in  her  hands; 
but  Roderick,  affected  apparently  now  in  some  un 
wonted  fashion  by  her  gesture,  drew  her  toward  him 
again  and  went  on  a  little  differently.  "  It 's  hardly 
worth  while  we  should  have  any  private  talk  about 
this,  Mary  "  — and  he  had  one  of  his  strange,  straight 
drops  (stranger  than  any  flare  of  passion  or  of  irony) 
into  simple  kindness.  "The  thing  would  be  com 
fortable  for  neither  of  us.  It 's  better,  after  all,  that  it 
be  said  once  for  all  and  dismissed.  There  are  things 
I  can't  talk  to  you  about.  Can  I,  at  least  ?  You  strike 
me  sometimes  as  deep,  you  know  —  one  never  can 
tell." 

425 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  can  imagine  nothing  you  should  n't  talk  to  me 
about,"  she  returned  impenetrably  enough  —  im 
penetrably,  that  is,  to  Rowland. 

"You're  not  afraid?"  —  Roderick  pressed  her 
with  a  sharpness  that  was,  for  the  few  seconds,  almost 
like  interest. 

She  turned  away  abruptly,  with  lowered  eyes,  in 
tensely  hesitating.  "Anything  you  think  I  should 
hear  I  '11  hear."  And  she  went  back  to  her  place  at 
the  window  and  took  up  her  work. 

"I've  had  a  great  smashing  blow,"  Roderick 
pursued.  "  I  was  the  biggest  ass  to  be  seen  anywhere, 
but  it  does  n't  make  the  blow  any  easier  to  bear." 

"  Mr.  Mallet,  tell  me  exactly  what  Roderick  means ! " 
said  Mrs.  Hudson,  who  had  found  her  voice,  in  a  tone 
more  peremptory  than  Rowland  had  yet  heard  her 
use. 

"He  ought  to  have  told  you  before,"  Roderick 
interposed.  "  Really,  Rowland,  if  you  '11  allow  me  to 
say  so,  you  ought!  You  could  have  given  a  much 
better  account  of  all  this  than  I  myself;  better  espe 
cially  in  that  it  would  have  been  more  lenient  to  me. 
You  ought  to  have  let  them  down  gently;  it  would  have 
saved  them  a  great  deal  of  pain.  But  you  always  want 
to  keep  things  so  uncannily  quiet.  Allow  me  to  tell 
you  it 's  very  weak  of  you." 

"  Speaking  too  well  of  you  's  a  fault  that 's  easily 
mended!"  said  Rowland  with  a  laugh. 

"Oh,  what  is  it,  sir;  what  is  this  horror?"  Mrs. 
Hudson  insistently  groaned. 

"  It 's  what  Roderick  says.  He  's  a  most  unexpected 
failure!" 

426 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Mary  Garland,  on  hearing  this  statement,  gave  the 
speaker  a  single  glance  and  then  rose,  laid  down  her 
work  and  walked  rapidly  out  of  the  room.  Mrs. 
Hudson  tossed  her  head  and  timidly  bristled.  "This 
from  you,  Mr.  Mallet  ?"  she  said,  with  an  injured  air 
which  Rowland  found  harrowing. 

But  Roderick,  most  characteristically,  did  not  in  the 
least  resent  his  friend's  assertion;  he  sent  him,  on  the 
contrary,  one  of  the  large,  clear,  beautiful  looks,  so 
often  at  his  command,  which  made  his  approval,  or 
his  patience,  so  unexpectedly  shine,  and  which  set  his 
companion  wondering  again,  as  all  too  frequently 
before,  at  the  extraordinary  disparities  of  his  nature. 
"  My  dear  mother,  if  you  had  had  eyes  that  were  n't 
blinded  by  this  sad  maternal  vanity  you  would  have 
seen  all  this  for  yourself;  you  would  have  seen  that 
I  'm  anything  but  prosperous." 

"Is  it  anything  about  money  ?"  cried  Mrs.  Hudson. 
"Oh,  do  write  at  once  to  Mr.  Striker!" 

"Money?"  said  Roderick.  "I've  not  a  cent  of 
money.  Where  and  how  should  I  have  got  it  ?" 

"Oh,  Mr.  Mallet,  how  could  you  let  him?"  Mrs. 
Hudson  asked  terribly. 

"Everything  I  have  is  at  his  service,"  said  Rowland, 
sick  now  of  the  scene. 

"Of  course  Mr.  Mallet  will  help  you,  my  son!" 
the  poor  lady  hastened  to  proclaim. 

"Ah,  leave  Mr.  Mallet  alone!"  said  Roderick. 
"I  've  squeezed  him  dry;  it 's  not  my  fault  if  he  has 
anything  left!" 

"Roderick,  what  have  you  done  with  all  your 
money?"  his  mother  demanded. 

427 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Thrown  it  away.  It  was  no  such  great  amount. 
I  've  done  nothing  this  winter." 

"You  've  done  nothing  ?" 

"  I  've  done  no  manner  of  work !  Why  in  the  world 
did  n't  you  guess  it  and  spare  me  all  this  ?  Could  n't 
you  see  I  was  empty,  distracted,  debauched  ?" 

"Debauched,  my  dear  son?"  Mrs.  Hudson  re 
peated. 

"That 's  over  for  the  present!  But  could  n't  you 
see  —  could  n't  Mary  see  —  that  I  was  in  a  damnably 
bad  way  ?" 

"I  've  no  doubt  Miss  Garland  saw,"  Rowland  said. 

"But  Mary  has  said  nothing  whatever!"  Mrs. 
Hudson  protested. 

"  Oh,  she  's  too  wonderful,"  Rowland  permitted 
himself  to  observe. 

"Have  you  done  anything  that  will  hurt  poor 
Mary  ? "  Mrs.  Hudson  gasped. 

"I  've  only  been  thinking  night  and  day  of  another 
woman." 

She  dropped  helplessly  into  her  seat  again.  "Oh 
dear,  dear,  had  n't  we  better  go  home  ?" 

"Not  to  get  out  of  her  way!"  Roderick  said.  "She 
has  started  on  a  career  of  her  own,  and  she  does  n't 
care  a  rap  for  me.  My  head  was  filled  with  her;  I 
could  think  of  nothing  else;  I  would  have  sacrificed 
everything  to  her  —  you,  Mary,  Mallet,  my  work,  my 
fortune,  my  future,  my  honour.  I  was  in  a  lovely 
state,  eh  ?  I  don't  pretend  to  be  giving  you  good  news; 
but  I  'm  telling  the  simple,  literal  truth,  so  that  you 
may  know  why  I  Ve  gone  to  the  dogs.  She  pretended 
to  care  greatly  for  all  this,  and  to  be  willing  to  make  any 

428 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sacrifice  in  return;  she  had  a  magnificent  chance,  for 
she  was  being  bullied  and  hustled,  horribly  against 
her  will,  into  a  mercenary  marriage  with  a  man  she 
could  n't  bear.  She  led  me  to  believe  that  she  would 
send  her  Prince  about  his  business  and  keep  herself 
free  and  sacred  and  pure  for  me.  This  was  a  great 
honour,  and  you  may  believe  I  valued  it.  It  turned 
my  head,  and  I  lived  only  to  see  my  happiness  come 
to  pass.  She  did  everything  to  encourage  me  to  hope 
it  would;  everything  her  infernal  coquetry  and  falsity 
could  suggest." 

"Oh,  I  say,  this  is  too  much!"  Rowland  bewil- 
deredly  interposed. 

"So  you  back  her  up,  eh  ?"  Roderick  cried  with  a 
renewal  of  his  passion.  "  Do  you  pretend  to  say  she 
gave  me  no  hopes  ?"  He  had  been  speaking  with 
growing  bitterness,  quite  losing  sight  of  his  mother's 
pain  and  bewilderment  in  the  passionate  joy  of  pub 
lishing  his  wrongs.  Since  he  was  hurt  he  must  cry  out; 
since  he  was  in  pain  he  must  scatter  his  pain  abroad. 
Of  his  never  thinking  of  others  save  as  they  figured  in 
his  own  drama  this  extraordinary  insensibility  to  the 
injurious  effects  of  his  eloquence  was  a  capital  exam 
ple;  the  more  so  as  the  motive  of  his  eloquence  was 
never  an  appeal  for  sympathy  or  compassion  — 
things  to  which  he  seemed  perfectly  indifferent  and  of 
which  he  could  make  no  use.  The  great  and  charac 
teristic  point  with  him  was  the  perfect  separateness 
of  his  sensibility.  He  never  saw  himself  as  part  of 
a  whole;  only  as  the  clear-cut,  sharp-edged,  isolated 
individual,  rejoicing  or  raging,  as  the  case  might  be, 
but  needing  in  any  case  absolutely  to  affirm  himself. 

429 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

All  this  to  Rowland  was  ancient  history,  but  his  per 
ception  of  it  stirred  within  him  afresh  at  the  sight  of 
Roderick's  sense  of  having  been  betrayed.  That  he, 
under  the  circumstances,  was  hardly  the  person  to 
raise  the  cry  of  treason,  was  a  point  to  which  at  his 
leisure  Rowland  was  of  course  capable  of  rendering 
impartial  justice;  but  his  friend's  present  collapse 
was  so  absolute  that  it  imposed  itself  on  his  sym 
pathies.  "Do  you  pretend  to  say,"  the  interesting 
youth  went  on,  "that  she  did  n't  lead  me  along  to  the 
very  edge  of  fulfilment  and  stupefy  me  with  all  she 
suffered  me  to  believe,  all  she  provoked  me,  invited 
me,  to  count  upon  ?  It  amused  her  to  do  it,  and  she 
knew  perfectly  well  what  she  really  meant.  She  never 
meant  to  be  sincere;  she  never  dreamed  she  could  be. 
She  's  a  ferocious  flirt,  and  why  a  flirt 's  a  flirt  is  more 
than  I  can  tell  you  now.  I  can't  understand  playing 
with  such  a  relation;  for  me  it  can  only  be  a  serious 
thing,  but  too  deadly  serious,  whether  to  go  in  for  or 
to  be  afraid  of.  I  don't  see  what 's  in  your  head,  my 
boy,  to  attempt  to  defend  such  a  person  —  since  you 
were  the  first,  you  '11  remember,  to  cry  out  against  her 
and  to  warn  me.  You  told  me  she  was  dangerous,  and 
I  pooh-poohed  you.  You  were  intensely  right;  you  're 
always  so  intensely  right.  She  's  as  cold  and  false  and 
heartless  as  she's  beautiful  —  which  is  saying  all; 
and  she  has  sold  her  heartless  beauty  to  the  highest 
bidder.  I  hope  he  knows  what  he  gets!" 

"Oh,  my  son,"  Mrs.  Hudson  plaintively  wailed, 
"how  could  you  ever  care  for  such  a  dreadful 
creature  ?" 

"It  would  take  long  to  tell  you,  dear  mother!" 
43° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland's  lately  quickened  interest  in  Christina 
had  still  its  fine  capacity  to  throb,  and  he  felt  that 
in  loyalty  to  it  as  to  an  at  least  more  enlightened 
view  he  must  say  a  word  for  her.  "You  took  her, 
I  did  think,  too  seriously  at  first,"  he  remarked,  "but 
you  take  her  too  harshly  now.  She  had  no  idea  of 
wronging  or  of  so  terribly  upsetting  you." 

Roderick  looked  at  him  on  this  with  eyes  almost 
lurid.  "She's  a  ministering  angel  then  after  all? 
—that's  what  you  want  to  prove!"  he  cried.  "That's 
consoling  for  me  who  have  lost  her!  You  're  always 
right,  I  say;  but,  my  dear  fellow,  be,  in  mercy,  just 
a  little  wrong  for  once!" 

"Oh  yes,  Mr.  Mallet,  show  a  little  mercy!"  said 
Mrs.  Hudson  in  a  tone  which,  for  all  its  gentleness, 
made  Rowland  stare.  This  demonstration  on  his 
part  covered  a  great  deal  of  concentrated  wonder 
and  apprehension  —  a  presentiment  of  what  a  small, 
sweet,  feeble,  elderly  lady  might  be  capable  of  in 
the  way  of  abrupt  and  perverse  animosity.  There 
was  no  space  in  Mrs.  Hudson's  tiny  maternal  mind 
for  complications  of  feeling,  and  one  emotion  ex 
isted  only  by  turning  another  over  flat  and  perch 
ing  on  top  of  it.  She  had  evidently  not  penetrated 
at  all,  having  no  imagination  for  it  whatever,  the 
strange  cloud  of  her  son's  personal  situation.  Sit 
ting  without,  in  dismay,  she  only  saw  that  all  was 
darkness  and  trouble,  and  as  his  gained  position, 
or  what  she  had  been  deeming  such,  appeared  quite 
to  exceed  her  original  measure  and  lift  him  beyond 
her  jurisdiction,  so  that  he  had  become  a  thing  too 
precious  and  sacred  for  blame,  she  found  it  infinitely 

431 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

comfortable  to  lay  the  burden  of  their  common  af 
fliction  upon  Rowland's  broad  shoulders.  Had  he 
not  promised  to  make  them  all  rich  and  happy  ? 
And  this  was  the  end  of  it!  Rowland  felt  as  if  his 
trials  were  only  beginning.  "Had  n't  you  better  for 
get  all  this,  my  dear?"  Mrs.  Hudson  said  to  Rod 
erick.  "Hadn't  you  better  just  quietly  attend  to  your 
work  ?" 

"Work,  madam?"  cried  Roderick.  "My  work's 
over.  I  can't  work  —  I  have  n't  worked  all  winter. 
If  I  were  fit  for  anything  this  tremendous  slap  in 
the  face  would  have  been  just  the  thing  to  cure  me 
of  my  apathy.  But  there  's  a  perfect  vacuum  here!" 
And  he  tapped  his  forehead.  "  It 's  bigger  than 
ever;  it  grows  bigger  every  hour!" 

"I'm  sure  you've  made  a  beautiful  likeness  of 
your  poor  dreary  little  mother,"  said  Mrs.  Hudson 
coaxingly. 

"I  had  done  nothing  before,  and  I  've  done  no 
thing  since!  I  quarrelled  with  an  excellent  man  the 
other  day  from  mere  exasperation  of  my  nerves,  and 
threw  away  five  thousand  dollars." 

"Threw  away  —  five  thousand  dollars!"  Rod 
erick  had  been  wandering  among  formidable  ab 
stractions,  complications  that  bristled  and  defied 
her  touch;  but  here  was  a  concrete  fact,  lucidly 
stated,  and  she  looked  it  for  a  moment  in  the  face. 
She  repeated  his  words  a  third  time  with  a  gasping 
murmur,  and  then  suddenly  she  burst  into  piteous 
tears.  Roderick  went  to  her,  sat  down  beside  her, 
put  his  arm  round  her,  fixed  his  eyes  coldly  on  the 
floor  and  waited  for  her  to  weep  herself  out.  She 

432 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

leaned  her  head  on  his  shoulder  and  sobbed  broken- 
heartedly.  She  said  not  a  word,  she  uttered  no  judge 
ment,  but  the  desolation  of  her  tears  was  dire.  It 
lasted  some  time  —  too  long  for  Rowland's  cour 
age.  He  had  stood  silent,  wishing  simply  to  appear 
very  respectful;  but  his  first  weary  relief,  that  of 
finding  their  crisis  really  there,  in  definite  and  meas 
urable  form,  to  be  practically  dealt  with,  had  utterly 
ebbed,  and  he  found  his  situation  intolerable.  He 
was  reduced  to  the  vulgar  expedient  of  leaving  the 
room. 

His  servant,  the  next  morning,  brought  him  the 
card  of  a  visitor.  He  read  with  surprise  the  name 
of  Mrs.  Hudson  and  hurried  forward  to  meet  her. 
He  found  her  in  his  sitting-room,  leaning  on  the 
arm  of  her  son  and  looking  very  pale,  her  eyes  red 
with  weeping  and  her  lips  tightly  compressed.  Her 
advent  puzzled  him,  and  it  was  not  for  some  time 
that  he  began  to  understand  her.  Roderick's  coun 
tenance  threw  no  light;  but  Roderick's  explanatory 
power  was  but  too  subject  to  rich  intermittences.  He 
had  not  for  several  weeks  graced  the  scene  now  open 
to  him,  and  he  immediately  began  to  look  at  those 
of  his  own  works  that  adorned  it.  He  gave  himself 
up  to  independent  contemplation.  Mrs.  Hudson 
had  evidently  armed  herself  with  dignity,  and  so  far  as 
she  might  she  meant  to  be  impressive.  Rowland  took 
comfort,  however,  in  her  small  quaint  majesty,  which 
might  have  been  that  of  a  shorn  sheep  roused  to  dis 
criminations  and  trying  to  correct  both  nature  and 
fate;  for  anything  was  better  than  seeing  her  again 
break  down.  She  told  him  that  she  had  come  to  him 

433 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

for  practical  advice;  she  took  leave  to  remind  him 
that  she  was  a  stranger  in  the  land.  Where  were 
they  to  go,  please  ?  What  were  they  to  do  ?  His  eyes, 
for  a  moment,  took  in  Roderick  —  Roderick  who 
had  his  back  turned  and,  with  his  head  on  one  side 
like  a  tourist  in  a  church,  was  lost  in  the  considera 
tion  of  his  own  proved  power.  The  proof,  meeting 
him  there  in  its  several  forms,  had  made  him  catch 
his  breath. 

"  Roderick  says  he  does  n't  know,  he  does  n't 
care,"  Mrs.  Hudson  meanwhile  observed.  "He 
leaves  it  entirely  to  you." 

Many  another  man,  in  Rowland's  place,  would 
have  greeted  this  information  with  an  irate  and  sar- 

O 

castic  laugh,  telling  his  visitors  that  he  thanked  them 
infinitely  for  their  confidence,  but  that  really,  as 
things  stood  now,  they  must  settle  these  little  mat 
ters  between  themselves;  many  another  man  might 
have  so  comported  himself  even  had  he  been,  deep 
within,  equally  occupied  with  the  image  of  Mary 
Garland,  and  not  less  amply  conscious  that  her  des 
tiny  was  also  part  of  the  question.  But  Rowland 
was  now  fairly  used  to  his  daily  dose  of  bitterness, 
and  after  a  hard  look,  as  always,  at  the  cup,  he  again 
swallowed  the  draught  and  entered,  responsively 
and  formally,  into  Mrs.  Hudson's  dilemma.  His 
wits,  however,  were  but  indifferently  at  his  com 
mand;  they  were  dulled  by  his  sense  of  the  singu 
lar  change  that  had  taken  place  in  the  attitude  of 
this  bewildered  woman.  Her  visit  was  evidently 
intended  as  a  grave  reminder  of  forgotten  vows. 
She  was  doubtless  too  sincerely  humble  a  person 

434 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

to  suppose  that  if  he  had  had  the  wicked  levity  to 
break  faith  with  her  any  shadow  she  might  cast 
would  act  as  a  lash  on  his  shoulders.  But  she  had 
convinced  herself  by  some  elaborate  lonely  logic 
that  she  had  been  weakly  wanting  in  "style"  and 
had  suffered  him  to  think  too  meanly  not  only  of 
her  understanding  but  of  her  social  consequence. 
A  visit  in  her  best  gown  would  have  an  admonitory 
effect  as  regards  both  of  these  attributes;  it  would 
cancel  some  favours  received  and  show  him  that 
she  was  not  incapable  of  grasping  the  theory,  at 
least,  of  retribution.  These  were  the  reflections  of 
a  very  shy  woman,  who,  determining  for  once  in  her 
life  to  hold  up  her  head,  was  actually  flying  it  like 
a  kite, 

"You  know  we  Ve  very  little  money  to  spend," 
she  said  while  her  host  waited  for  the  full  expression 
of  her  idea.  "Roderick  tells  me  he  has  debts  and 
has  also  nothing  at  all  to  pay  them  with.  He  says 
I  must  write  to  Mr.  Striker  to  sell  my  house  for 
what  it  will  bring  and  send  me  out  the  money. 
When  the  money  comes  I  must  give  it  to  him.  I  'm 
sure  I  don't  know;  I  never  heard  of  anything  so 
dreadful.  My  house  is  really  the  principal  part  of 
my  property.  But  that 's  all  Roderick  will  say.  We 
must  be  very  economical." 

Before  this  speech  was  finished  her  voice  had 
begun  to  quaver  softly,  and  her  face,  after  all  so 
inadequately  grim,  to  have  motions  that  beat  the  air 
like  the  wild  arms  of  the  sinking.  Rowland  found 
himself  turning  hereupon  to  their  companion  and 
speaking  almost  as  a  schoolmaster.  "Come  away 

435 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

from  those  statues  and  sit  down  here  and  listen  to 
me." 

Roderick  started,  but  obeyed  with  the  most  grace 
ful  docility,  choosing  a  stiff-backed  antique  chair. 

"What  do  you  propose  to  your  mother  to  do?" 
Rowland  then  enquired. 

"Propose  ?"  said  Roderick  absently.  "Oh,  I  pro 
pose  nothing." 

The  tone,  the  look,  the  gesture  with  which  this 
was  said  were  horribly  irritating,  and  for  an  instant 
an  imprecation  rose  to  Rowland's  lips.  But  he 
checked  it,  and  was  afterwards  glad  he  had  done 
so.  "You  must  do  something  of  some  sort,  you 
know,"  he  said.  "Choose,  select,  decide." 

"My  dear  Rowland,  how  impossibly  you  talk!" 
his  companion  hereupon  exclaimed.  "The  very 
point  of  the  whole  thing  is  that  I  can't  do  anything. 
I  '11  do  as  I  'm  told,  of  course,  and  be  thankful,  but 
I  don't  call  that  doing.  We  must  leave  Rome,  I  sup 
pose,  though  I  don't  see  why.  We  've  no  money,  and 
you  have  to  pay  cash,  you  know,  on  the  railroads." 

Mrs.  Hudson  surreptitiously  wrung  her  hands. 
"Listen  to  him,  please!  Not  leave  Rome,  when 
we  've  stayed  here  later  than  any  respectable  family 
ever  did  before!  It's  this  dreadful  place  that  has 
made  us  so  unhappy.  If  Roderick 's  so  relaxed  it 's  no 
more  than  I  am,  too,  and  it 's  all  the  poison  of  the 
air." 

"  It 's  very  true  that  I  'm  relaxed,"  said  Roderick 
serenely.  "  If  I  had  n't  come  to  Rome  I  should  n't 
have  risen,  and  if  I  had  n't  risen  I  should  n't  have 
fallen." 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Fallen  — fallen!"  sighed  Mrs.  Hudson.  "Just 
hear  him!" 

"I  '11  do  anything  you  say,  my  dear  man,"  Rod 
erick  continued.  "I  '11  do  anything  you  want.  I  Ve 
not  been  unkind  to  my  mother  —  have  I,  mother  ? 
I  was  unkind  yesterday,  without  meaning  it  ;  for, 
after  all,  you  know,  all  that  had  to  be  said.  Murder 
will  out,  and  my  little  troubles  can't  be  hidden.  But 
we  talked  it  over  and  made  it  up,  did  n't  we  ?•  It 
seemed  to  me  we  did.  Let  Rowland  decide  it,  mother; 
whatever  he  suggests  will  be  the  right  thing."  And 
Roderick,  who  had  hardly  removed  his  eyes  from 
the  exhibition  of  his  work,  got  up  again  and  went 
back  to  the  great  figure  in  which,  during  his  divine 
first  freshness,  he  had  embodied  his  idea  of  the  primal 
Adam. 

Mrs.  Hudson  fixed  her  eyes  upon  the  opposite 
wall.  There  was  not  a  trace  in  Roderick's  face  or 
in  his  voice  of  the  bitterness  of  his  emotion  of  the 
day  before,  and  not  a  hint  of  his  having  the  lightest 
weight  upon  his  conscience.  He  looked  at  his  friend, 
all  radiance  and  intelligence,  as  if  there  had  never 
been  a  difference  of  opinion  between  them;  as  if 
each  had  ever  been  for  both,  unalterably,  and  both 
unalterably  for  each. 

Rowland  had  received  a  few  days  before  a  letter 
from  a  lady  of  his  acquaintance,  a  worthy  Scots 
woman  domiciled  in  a  villa  upon  one  of  the  olive- 
covered  hills  near  Florence.  She  held  her  apartments 
in  the  villa  upon  a  long  lease,  and  she  enjoyed  for 
a  sum  not  worth  mentioning  the  possession  of  an 
extraordinary  number  of  noble,  stone-floored  rooms, 

437 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

with  ceilings  vaulted  and  frescoed,  with  barred  win 
dows  commanding  the  loveliest  view  in  the  world. 
She  was  a  needy  and  thrifty  spinster  who  never  hesi 
tated  to  declare  that  the  lovely  view  was  all  very  well, 
but  that  for  her  own  part  she  lived  in  the  villa  for 
cheapness  and  that  with  five  hundred  a  year  as 
sured  she  would  undertake  to  lead  a  worthier  life 
near  her  sister,  a  knight's  lady  at  Glasgow.  She  was 
now  proposing  a  visit  to  that  seat  of  discipline,  and 
she  desired  to  turn  an  honest  penny  by  subletting  for 
a  few  weeks  her  historic  Italian  chambers.  The  terms 
on  which  she  occupied  them  enabled  her  to  ask  a  rent 
scarce  worth  mention,  and  she  had  begged  Rowland  to 
do  what  she  called  a  little  genteel  advertising  for  her. 
Would  he  say  a  good  word  for  her  rooms  to  his  nu 
merous  friends  in  Rome  ?  He  said  a  good  word  for 
them  now  to  Mrs.  Hudson  and  told  her  in  dollars  and 
cents  how  cheap  a  summer's  lodging  she  might  secure. 
He  dwelt  upon  the  fact  that  she  would  strike  a  truce 
with  tables-d'kote,  and  have  a  servant  of  her  own, 
amenable  possibly  to  instruction  in  the  Northampton 
mysteries.  He  had  touched  a  tender  chord,  and  his 
visitor  gave  out  a  vague  hum  of  reassurance.  Her 
sentiments  upon  the  table-d'hote  system  and  upon 
foreign  household  habits  generally  had  arrived  at  a 
high  development,  and  if  we  had  space  for  it  would 
repay  analysis;  and  the  idea  of  reclaiming  a  lost  soul 
to  the  conception  of  a  good  New  England  "tea"  set 
before  her  a  light  at  which  she  could  dimly  blink. 
While  Rowland  argued  his  case  Roderick  slowly 
walked  through  the  rooms  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets.  Rowland  waited  for  him  to  show  some 

438 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

interest  in  their  discussion,  but  he  had  no  attention 
for  his  friend's  ingenuity.  Rowland  had  always  at 
his  friends'  service  and  his  own  his  vision  of  the  how 
and  the  how  much;  he  possessed  conspicuously  the 
sense  of  detail.  He  entered  into  Mrs.  Hudson's 
position  minutely  and  told  her  exactly  why  it  seemed 
good  that  she  should  remove  immediately  to  the 
Florentine  villa.  She  received  his  advice,  but  sat  on 
her  guard  for  it,  averting  her  eyes  much  and  sighing 
like  a  person  suspicious  of  a  plausibility  which  might 
be,  on  her  entertainer's  part,  but  an  escape  from 
penalties.  Yet  she  had  nothing  better  to  propose, 
and  Rowland  received  her  permission  to  write  to  his 
friend  that  she  would  take  the  rooms. 

Roderick  assented  to  this  decision  with  a  large 
placidity.  "Those  Florentine  villas  are  capable  of 
anything!  I  'm  perfectly  at  your  service." 

"Then  I  'm  sure  I  hope  you  '11  recover  your  tone 
up  there,"  his  mother  moaned  while  she  gathered  her 
shawl  together. 

Roderick  laid  one  hand  on  her  arm  and  with  the 
other  pointed  to  Rowland's  marbles.  "This  is  my 
tone  just  now.  Once  upon  a  time  I  did  those  things 
—  if  it 's  possible  to  believe  it." 

Mrs.  Hudson  gazed  at  them  vaguely,  and  Rowland 
dropped  the  remark  that  such  a  tone  was  a  capital 
tone. 

"They  're  too  hideously  beautiful!"  said  Roderick. 

Rowland  solemnly  shrugged  his  shoulders;  it 
seemed  to  him  he  had  nothing  more  to  say.  But  as  the 
others  were  going  a  last  deep  throb  of  the  sense  of 
undischarged  duty  led  him  to  address  to  Roderick  a 

439 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

few  words  of  parting  advice.  "You  '11  find  the  Villa 
Pandolfini  very  delightful,  very  comfortable.  You 
ought  to  be  very  contented  there.  Whether  you  work 
or  whether  you  do  what  you  're  doing  now,  it 's  a 
place  for  an  artist  to  be  happy  in.  But  I  hope  you  '11 
work." 

"I  hope  to  heaven  I  may!"  It  was  full  of  expres 
sion,  but  he  might  have  been  speaking  of  some  inter 
esting  alien. 

"When  we  meet  again,"  Rowland  said,  "try  then 
to  have  something  to  show  me." 

"When  we  meet  again  ?  Where  the  deuce  are  you 
going?"  Roderick  demanded. 

"Oh,  I  hardly  know;  over  the  Alps." 

"Over  the  Alps!    You  're  going  to  leave  me?" 

Rowland  had  certainly  meant  to  leave  him,  but  his 
resolution  was  not  proof  against  this  bare  ejacula 
tion.  He  glanced  at  Mrs.  Hudson  and  saw  that  her 
eyebrows  were  lifted  and  her  lips  parted  in  delicate 
reprehension.  She  seemed  to  accuse  him  of  a  craven 
shirking  of  trouble,  to  demand  of  him  to  repair  his 
cruel  havoc  in  her  life  by  a  solemn  renewal  of  zeal. 
But  Roderick's  expectations  were  the  oddest!  Such 
as  they  were,  Rowland  asked  himself  why  he 
should  n't  make  a  bargain  with  them.  "You  want 
me  to  go  with  you  ?"  he  asked. 

"  If  you  don't  go  I  won't  —  that 's  all!  How  in  the 
name  of  goodness  shall  I  get  through  the  next  six 
months  without  you  ?" 

"How  will  you  get  through  them  with  me  ?  That 's 
the  question!" 

"I  don't  pretend  to  say;  the  future  's  a  dead  blank. 
440 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

But  without  you  it 's  not  a  blank  —  it 's  certain 
damnation!" 

"Mercy,  mercy,  mercy!"  murmured  Mrs.  Hudson. 

Rowland  made  an  effort  to  turn  to  account  this 
precious  symptom  of  a  positive  wish.  "  If  I  go  with 
you,  will  you  try  to  work  ?" 

Roderick  had  up  to  this  moment  been  looking  as 
unperturbed  as  if  the  deep  agitation  of  the  day  before 
were  a  thing  of  the  remote  past.  But  at  these  words 
his  face  changed  formidably;  he  flushed  and  scowled, 
and  all  his  passion  returned.  "  Try  to  work ! "  he  cried. 
"Try  —  try!  work  —  work!  In  God's  name  don't 
talk  that  way,  or  I  shall  think  you  do  it  on  purpose. 
Do  you  suppose  I  'm  trying  not  to  work  ?  Do  you 
suppose  I  stand  rotting  here  for  the  fun  of  it  ?  Don't 
you  suppose  I  would  try  to  work  for  myself  before 
I  tried  for  you  ?" 

"Mr.  Mallet,"  cried  Mrs.  Hudson  piteously,  "will 
you  leave  me  alone  with  this?" 

Rowland  turned  to  her  and  informed  her  gently 
that  he  would  go  with  her  then  to  Florence.  After  he 
had  taken  this  engagement  he  thought  not  at  all  of  the 
pain  of  his  position  as  mediator  between  the  mother's 
resentful  grief  and  the  son's  incureable  weakness;  he 
drank  deep,  only,  of  the  satisfaction  of  not  cutting 
himself  off  from  their  other  companion.  If  the  future 
was  a  blank  to  Roderick  it  was  hardly  less  so  to  him 
self.  He  had  at  moments  a  sharp  foreboding  of  ill 
things  yet  to  come.  He  paid  it  no  special  deference, 
but  it  seemed  to  warn  him  not  to  count  on  the  future 
for  anything  he  might  squeeze  out  of  the  present. 
On  his  going  to  take  leave  of  Madame  Grandoni 

441 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

this  lady  asked  when  he  would  come  back  to  Rome, 
and  he  answered  that  he  would  return  either  never 
or  for  always.  When  she  asked  him  what  he  meant 
he  said  he  really  could  n't  tell  her;  but  this  moved  her 
to  embrace  him  in  a  motherly  manner,  as  if  she  under 
stood.  She  did  more,  she  pronounced  him  a  paragon 
among  men;  only  that  afterwards  made  his  ears 
burn  —  it  was  so  like  a  consecration  afresh  of  the 
overstrained  use  of  his  reason  and  his  charity.  There 
were  moments  now  when  these  faculties  in  him  felt 
limp  and  lifeless. 


XXII 

THE  Villa  Pandolfini  leaned  largely  upon  a  grass- 
grown  piazzetta  at  the  top  of  a  hill  which  sloped 
straight  from  one  of  the  gates  of  Florence.  It  offered 
to  the  outer  world  an  ample  front,  though  not  of  rare 
elevation,  coloured  a  dull  dark  yellow  and  pierced 
with  windows  of  various  sizes,  no  one  of  which  save 
those  on  the  ground  floor  was  on  the  same  level  with 
any  other.  Within  was  a  great  cool  grey  cortile, 
graced  round  about  with  high  light  arches  and  heavily- 
corniced  doors  of  majestic  altitude  and  furnished  on 
one  side  with  a  grand  old  archaic  well.  Mrs.  Hudson's 
rooms  opened  into  a  small  garden  founded  on  sub 
structions  of  immense  strength,  rising  from  the  part 
of  the  hill  that  sloped  steeply  away.  This  garden  was 
a  charming  place.  Its  southern  wall  was  curtained 
with  a  screen  of  orange-blossoms,  a  dozen  fig-trees 
here  and  there  offered  you  their  large-leaved  shade, 
and  over  the  low  parapet  the  soft  grave  Tuscan  land 
scape  kept  you  company.  The  rooms  themselves  were 
as  high  as  chapels  and  as  cool  as  royal  sepulchres. 
Silence,  peace  and  security  seemed  to  abide  in  the 
ancient  house,  to  make  of  it  a  square  fortress  against 
further  assault  of  fortune.  Mrs.  Hudson  took  into 
her  service  a  stunted  brown-faced  Maddalena,  who 
wore  a  crimson  handkerchief  passed  over  her  coarse 
black  locks  and  tied  under  her  sharp  pertinacious 
chin,  and  played  over  the  domestic  question  in  gen- 

443 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

eral  a  smile  as  vivid,  though  perhaps  as  treacherous, 
as  some  flaring  mediaeval  torch,  the  signal  to  con 
federates  without.  A  glance,  a  word,  a  motion, 
made  her  show  her  teeth  like  a  friendly  she-wolf. 
This  formidable  flicker  formed  her  sole  substitute 
for  speech  with  her  melancholy  mistress,  to  whom 
she  had  been  bequeathed  by  the  late  occupant  of 
the  apartment  and  who,  to  Rowland's  satisfaction, 
promised  to  be  diverted  from  the  study  of  his  pre 
dicament  by  the  still  deeper  perversity  of  Madda- 
lena's  theory  of  roasting,  sweeping  and  bed-making. 
Rowland  took  rooms  at  a  villa  a  trifle  nearer 
Florence,  whence  in  the  summer  mornings  he  had 
five  minutes'  walk  in  the  sharp  black  shadow-strip 
projected  by  winding  flower-topped  walls  to  join  his 
friends.  The  life  at  Villa  Pandolfini,  when  it  had 
begun  to  fill  out  its  measure,  took  the  rhythm  of  the 
slow  summer  days,  during  which  nothing  would  have 
been  more  open  to  it  than  to  confess  itself  charmed  to 
patience.  If  it  was  under  a  sensible  shadow  this  was 
because  it  had  an  inherent  vice;  it  feigned  an  uncon 
sciousness  that  it  too  scantily  felt.  Roderick  had  lost 
no  time  in  showing  how  little  he  was  still  able  to  save, 
and  as  he  was  the  central  figure  of  the  small  group, 
as  he  held  its  heart-strings  all  in  his  hand,  it  reflected 
faithfully  the  eclipse  of  his  genius.  No  one  had  ven 
tured  upon  the  cheerful  commonplace  of  saying  that 
the  change  of  air  and  of  scene  would  restore  his  spirits; 
this  would  have  had,  in  the  conditions,  altogether  too 
silly  a  sound.  The  change  had  clearly  done  nothing 
of  the  sort,  and  his  companions  had  at  least  the  com 
fort  of  their  mute  recognition.  An  essential  spring  had 

444 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

dried  up  within  him,  and  there  was  no  household 
magic,  no  waving  of  any  blest  wand,  to  make  it  flow 
again.  He  was  rarely  violent,  he  expressed  little  of  the 
irritation  and  ennui  he  must  have  constantly  felt; 
it  was  as  if  he  believed  that  an  inward  miracle  —  but 
only  a  miracle  —  might  yet  take  place  for  him  and 
was  perhaps  worth  waiting  for.  The  most  that  one 
could  do,  however,  was  to  wait  grimly  and  doggedly, 
suppressing  an  imprecation  as  from  time  to  time  one 
looked  at  one's  watch.  An  attitude  of  positive  urban 
ity  towards  life  was  not  to  be  expected;  it  was  doing 
one's  duty  to  hold  one's  tongue  and  keep  one's  hands 
off  one's  own  windpipe  and  other  people's.  He  had 
long  sad  silences,  fits  of  a  deeper  detachment  than  any 
before,  during  which  he  sat  in  the  garden  by  the  hour, 
with  his  head  thrown  back,  his  legs  outstretched,  his 
hands  in  his  pockets  and  his  eyes  attached  to  the 
blinding  summer  sky.  He  would  gather  a  dozen  books 
about  him,  tumble  them  out  on  the  ground,  take  one 
into  his  lap  and  leave  it  with  the  pages  unturned. 
These  moods  would  alternate  with  attacks  of  high 
restlessness,  when,  at  unnatural  hours,  he  made  un 
explained  absences.  He  bore  the  heat  of  the  Italian 
summer  like  a  salamander  and  used  to  start  off  in  the 
glare  of  noon  for  long  walks  over  the  hills.  He  often 
went  down  into  Florence,  rambled  through  the  close 
dim  streets  and  lounged  away  mornings  in  the 
churches  and  galleries.  On  several  of  these  occasions 
Rowland  bore  him  company,  for  they  were  the  times 
when  his  contact  had  most  of  its  early  charm.  Be 
fore  Michael  Angelo's  statues  and  the  pictures  of 
the  early  Tuscans  he  quite  forgot  his  disaster  and 

445 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

picked  up  the  thread  of  his  old  love  of  ideas.  He 
found  again  in  Florence  certain  of  his  Roman  friends 
and  made  with  them  appointments  more  or  less 
genial.  More  than  once  he  asked  Mary  Garland  to 
accompany  him  to  the  city,  where  he  showed  her  the 
things  he  most  cared  for.  He  had  a  mass  of  sculptor's 
clay  brought  up  to  the  villa  and  deposited  in  a  room 
suitable  for  his  work,  but  when  this  had  been  done 
he  turned  the  key  in  the  door  and  the  clay  was  never 
touched.  His  eye  was  heavy  and  his  hand  cold,  and 
his  mother  was  more  than  once  caught  in  the  act  of 
praying  that  he  might  be  induced  to  see  a  doctor. 
On  one  of  these  occasions  he  had  a  great  outburst 
of  anger,  begging  her  to  know  once  for  all  that  his 
health  in  these  days  fairly  mocked  him  with  its  excel 
lence.  On  the  whole,  and  most  of  the  time,  he  irresist 
ibly  appealed,  the  air  being  charged  with  him  as  with 
some  rich  wasted  essence,  some  spirit  scattered  by 
the  breaking  of  its  phial  and  yet  unable,  for  its  very 
quality,  to  lose  itself.  If  he  was  not  querulous  and 
bitter  it  was  because  he  had  taken  an  extraordinary 
vow  not  to  be;  a  vow  heroic  for  him  and  which  those 
who  knew  him  well  had  the  tenderness  to  appreciate. 
Talking  with  him  was  like  skating  on  thin  ice,  and 
his  companions  had  a  constant  mental  vision  of  spots 
marked  dangerous. 

This  was  an  arduous  time  for  Rowland;  he  said  to 
himself  that  he  would  see  it  through  but  must  never 
court  again  such  perils.  Mrs.  Hudson  divided  it 
between  looking  askance  at  her  son,  with  her  hands 
tightly  clasped  about  her  pocket-handkerchief,  as  if 
she  were  wringing  it  dry  of  the  last  hour's  tears,  and 

446 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

turning  her  eyes  much  more  directly  to  his  perfidi 
ous  patron,  on  whom  they  rested  in  the  mutest,  the 
feeblest,  the  most  unbearable  reprehension.  She 
never  phrased  her  accusations,  but  he  felt  them  gather 
in  the  poor  lady's  inward  gloom  like  monsters  and 
spectral  shapes.  These  things  were  a  felt  weight,  of 
the  heaviest,  to  him,  and  if  at  the  outset  of  his  experi 
ment  he  had  seen  the  possibility  of  them,  how  dimly  so 
ever,  in  the  opposite  scale,  the  brilliancy  of  Roderick's 
promises  would  have  counted  for  little.  It  would  have 
been  better  perhaps  had  she  appeared  voluble  and 
vulgar,  for  neat  and  noiseless  and  dismally  ladylike 
as  she  sat  there,  keeping  her  grievance  green  with  her 
soft-dropping  tears,  her  forbearance  had  somehow  an 
edge  and  her  propriety  a  chill.  He  did  his  best  to  be 
thoroughly  civil  to  her  and  to  treat  her  with  distin 
guished  deference,  but  perhaps  his  exasperated 
nerves  made  him  overshoot  the  mark  and  rendered 
his  attentions  too  grimly  formal.  She  met  them  at 
moments  almost  as  if  they  had  represented  a  longer 
stretch  of  duplicity.  She  seemed  capable  of  be 
lieving  that  he  was  trying  to  make  a  fool  of  her;  she 
would  have  thought  him  cruelly  recreant  if  he  had 
suddenly  turned  his  back,  and  yet  she  gave  him  no 
visible  credit  for  consistency.  It  often  struck  him  that 
he  had  too  abjectly  forfeited  his  freedom.  Was  n't  it 
grotesque,  at  his  age,  to  be  put  into  a  corner  for 
punishment  ? 

But  Mary  Garland  had  helped  him  before  and 
she  helped  him  now  —  helped  him  not  less  than  he 
had  assured  himself  she  would  when  he  found  him 
self  drifting  to  Florence.  Yet  her  help  was  rendered 

447 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

as  unconsciously,  he  believed,  and  certainly  as  in 
directly  as  before:  he  had  made  no  apologies,  and 
she  had  offered  to  remit  no  penalties.  After  that 
dreadful  scene  in  Rome  which  had  hurried  their 
departure  it  was  of  course  impossible  that  there 
should  not  be  on  the  girl's  part  some  frankness  of 
allusion  to  Roderick's  so  pronounced  and  so  public 
perversity.  She  had  been  present,  the  reader  will 
remember,  during  only  half  this  supreme  demon 
stration  of  it,  and  Rowland  had  not  seen  her  con 
fronted  with  any  absolute  proof  of  the  dependence 
of  their  friend's  equilibrium  on  a  crookedness  the 
more  or  less  in  the  tortuous  progress  of  Christina 
Light.  But  he  knew  that  she  knew  too  much  for 
her  trust  or  her  peace  —  even  for  the  most  indulgent 
view  of  her  dignity:  Roderick  had  told  him,  shortly 
after  their  settlement  at  the  Villa  Pandolfini,  that 
he  had  had  a  "tremendous  talk"  with  his  cousin. 
Rowland  asked  no  questions  about  it;  he  preferred 
not  to  have  to  take  this  knowledge  into  account. 
If  the  interview  had  but  stirred  the  waters  of  bitter 
ness  he  wished  to  ignore  it  for  Mary's  sake;  and  if 
it  had  sown  the  seeds  of  reconciliation  he  wished 
to  close  his  eyes  to  it  for  his  own  —  for  the  sake  of 
that  shy  contingency,  for  ever  dismissed  and  yet 
for  ever  present,  which  hovered  in  the  background 
of  his  consciousness  with  a  hanging  head  and  yet 
an  unshamed  glance,  and  which  had  only,  like  a 
sentry  in  a  narrow  niche,  to  shift  from  one  foot  to 
the  other,  in  order  to  become  a  fresh  bribe  to  pa 
tience.  Was  the  old  understanding  "off,"  or  was 
Mary,  in  spite  of  humiliation,  keeping  it  on  ?  — 

448 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  she  in  short  consenting  to  that,  to  humiliation  ? 
Rowland  looked  at  the  question  rather  than  asked 
it,  since  everything  hung  for  him  on  her  possible 
appetite  for  sacrifice,  on  his  measure,  so  to  call  it, 
of  what  she  would  abjectly  "take."  Was  she  one 
of  those  who  would  be  abject  for  some  last  scrap  of 
the  feast  of  their  dream  ?  It  wronged  her,  as  he 
liked  to  think  of  her,  to  believe  either  that  she  was 
or  that  she  was  n't,  and,  as  if  the  matter  were  none 
of  his  business,  he  tried  to  turn  away  his  head.  There 
are  women  whose  love  is  care-taking  and  patron 
ising  and  who  attach  themselves  to  those  persons 
of  the  other  sex  in  whom  the  manly  grain  is  soft 
and  submissive.  It  did  not  in  the  least  please  him 
to  hold  her  one  of  these,  for  he  regarded  such  women 
as  mere  males  in  petticoats,  and  he  was  convinced 
that  this  young  lady  was  intensely  of  her  sex.  That 
she  was  a  very  different  person  from  Christina  Light 
did  n't  at  all  prove  that  she  was  a  less  considerable 
one,  and  if  the  Princess  Casamassima  had  gone  up 
into  a  high  place  to  publish  her  dismissal  of  a  man 
who  could  n't  strike  out  like  a  man,  it  had  been 
hitherto  presumable  that  she  was  not  of  a  complexion 
to  put  up  at  any  point  with  what  might  be  called 
the  Princess's  leavings.  It  was  Christina's  constant 
practice  to  remind  you  of  the  complexity  of  her  char 
acter,  of  the  subtlety  of  her  mind,  of  her  troublous 
faculty  of  seeing  everything  in  a  dozen  different 
lights.  Mary  had  never  pretended  not  to  be  simple; 
but  Rowland  had  a  theory  that  she  had  really  a  finer 
sense  of  human  things  and  had  made  more,  for 
observation  and  for  temper,  of  her  scant  onaterial 

449 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  experience,  than  Christina  had  ever  made  of  the 
stuff  of  her  wild  weaving.  She  did  you  the  honours 
of  her  intelligence  with  a  less  accomplished  grace, 
but  was  not  that  retreat  as  fragrant  a  maiden's  bower  ? 
If  in  poor  Christina's  strangely  mixed  nature  there 
was  circle  within  circle  and  depth  beneath  depth, 
it  was  to  be  believed  that  the  object  of  Rowland's 
preference,  though  she  did  not  amuse  herself  with 
dropping  stones  into  her  soul  and  waiting  to  hear 
them  fall,  could  none  the  less  draw  from  the  reser 
voir  in  question  as  brimming  a  bucket  of  energy. 
She  had  believed  Roderick  was  "splendid"  when 
she  bade  him  farewell  beneath  their  New  England 
elms,  and  this  synthetic  term,  to  her  young,  strenu 
ous,  concentrated  imagination,  had  meant  many 
things.  If  it  was  to  know  itself  chilled  to  the  core, 
that  would  be  because  disenchantment  had  won 
the  battle  at  each  successive  point  and  was  now  en 
camped  on  the  field. 

She  showed  even  in  her  face  and  step,  meanwhile, 
the  tension  of  the  watcher  and  the  time-keeper: 
poor  Roderick's  muddled  sum  was  a  mystifying  page 
to  a  girl  who  had  supposed  genius  to  be  to  one's  spir 
itual  economy  what  a  large  balance  at  the  bank  is 
to  one's  domestic.  And  yet  our  friend  never  tasted 
with  her,  as  with  Mrs.  Hudson,  of  that  acrid  under 
current  —  the  impertinent  implication  that  he  had 
defrauded  her  of  a  promised  security.  Did  this 
spring  in  her  from  a  vague  imagination  of  his  own 
feeling,  or  even  from  a  vague  pity  for  it  ?  The  answer 
might  have  been  hopeful,  inasmuch  as  she  had  al 
most  let  him  think  before  leaving  Rome  that  she 

450 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

liked  him  well  enough  to  forgive  him  an  injury.  It 
was  partly,  he  fancied,  that  there  were  occasional 
lapses,  deep  and  sweet,  in  her  sense  of  what  had 
happened.  When  on  arriving  at  Florence  she  saw 
the  place  he  had  brought  them  to  in  their  trouble, 
she  had  given  him  a  look,  and  said  a  few  words, 
that  had  seemed  almost  more  than  a  remission  of 
penalties.  This  happened  in  the  court  of  the  villa 

-  the  large  grey  quadrangle,  overstretched,  from 
edge  to  edge  of  the  red-tiled  roof,  by  the  deep  Ital 
ian  sky.  Mary  had  felt  on  the  spot  the  sovereign 
charm  of  the  place;  it  was  reflected  in  her  sincere 
eyes,  and,  immediately  promising  himself  to  work 
it,  as  the  phrase  was,  for  all  it  was  worth,  Row 
land  as  promptly  accepted  the  odium  of  not  having 
done  the  villa  justice.  She  fell  in  love  on  the  spot 
with  Florence,  and  used  to  look  down  wistfully  at 
the  towered  city  from  their  terraced  garden.  Rod 
erick  having  now  no  pretext  for  not  being  her  cice 
rone,  Rowland  was  no  longer  at  liberty,  as  he  had 
been  in  Rome,  to  propose  frequent  excursions  to 
her.  Roderick's  own  invitations,  however,  were 
much  interspaced,  and  their  companion  more  than 
once  ventured  to  introduce  her  to  a  gallery  or  a 
church.  These  expeditions  were  not  so  blissful,  to 
Rowland's  sense,  as  the  rambles  they  had  taken 
together  in  Rome,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  they 
made  unmistakeably,  a  more  embarrassed  appeal 
to  hers.  She  was  trying  what  they  could  do  for  her 

—  little  indeed  as  she  might  betray  it  if  they  failed. 
She  had  at  her  command  but  half  her  attention,  and 
often,  when  she  had  begun  with  looking  closely  at  a 

45 i 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

picture,  her  silence,  after  an  interval,  made  him  turn 
and  see  that  if  her  eyes  were  fixed,  her  thoughts  were 
wandering  and  an  image  more  vivid  than  any  Ra 
phael  or  Titian  had  superposed  itself  upon  the  can 
vas.  She  asked  fewer  questions  than  before  and 
seemed  to  have  lost  heart  for  consulting  guide-books 
and  encyclopaedias.  From  time  to  time,  however, 
she  uttered  a  deep  full  murmur  of  gratification. 
Florence  in  midsummer  was  perfectly  void  of  travel 
lers,  and  the  dense  little  city  gave  forth  its  historic 
soul  with  that  larger  passion  with  which  the  night 
ingale  sings  when  listeners  have  ceased  to  be  visible. 
The  churches  were  deliciously  cool,  but  the  grey 
streets  stifling  and  the  great  dovetailed  polygons 
of  pavement  hot  to  the  lingering  tread.  Rowland, 
who  suffered  from  deadness  of  air,  would  have  found 
all  this  uncomfortable  in  solitude;  but  Florence  had 
never  charmed  him  so  completely  as  during  these 
midsummer  strolls  with  his  preoccupied  compan 
ion.  One  evening  they  had  arranged  to  go  on  the 
morrow  to  the  Academy.  Mary  kept  her  appoint 
ment,  but  as  soon  as  she  appeared  he  saw  that, 
though  she  was  doing  her  best  to  look  at  her  ease, 
she  had  had  some  evil  hour.  When  he  hinted  that 
he  feared  she  was  ill  and  that  if  she  preferred  to  give 
up  their  adventure  he  would  submit  with  what  grace 
he  might,  she  replied,  after  hesitation,  that  she  would 
adhere  to  their  plan.  "I  'm  certainly  not  'well,'"  she 
presently  added,  "but  it's  a  moral  malady,  and  in 
such  cases  I  regard  your  company  as  a  tonic." 

"But  if  I  'm  to  administer  you  remedies,"  he  said, 
"you  must  tell  me  how  your  indisposition  came  on." 

452 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  can  tell  you  very  little.  It  came  on  with  Mrs. 
Hudson's  doing  me  an  injustice  —  for  the  first  time 
in  her  life.  And  now  I  'm  already  better." 

This  scant  passage  confirmed  for  Rowland  an 
impression  he  had  tried  positively  to  cultivate.  He 
was  but  too  aware  of  the  shocked,  scared  element 
in  Mrs.  Hudson's  view  of  her  son's  "sentimental" 
infidelity,  but  he  was  surer  than  ever  now  that  the 
young  man  himself,  much  more  than  his  wronged 
bride-that-was-to-be,  had  been  marked  by  it  for  her 
indulgence.  She  was  fond  enough,  obviously,  of 
her  serviceable  little  cousin,  but  she  had  valued  her 
primarily,  during  the  last  two  years,  as  an  assistant 
priestess  at  Roderick's  shrine.  Roderick  had  paid 
her  the  compliment  of  asking  her  to  become,  at  his 
later  convenience,  his  wife,  but  that  poor  Mary's 
own,  and  her  present,  convenience  was  sharply  in 
volved  appeared  not  to  have  occurred  to  his  mother. 
Her  understanding  of  the  matter  was  of  course  not 
rigidly  formulated,  but  it  was  as  if  she  felt  that  Rod- 
derick  and  she  together  sufficed  as  victims,  without 
their  counting  in  their  kinswoman.  It  would  be 
Rowland  and  Rome  and  the  artistic  temperament 
that  had  victimised  them,  but  it  would  be  the 
people  naturally  enamoured  of  Roderick  most  of  all. 
He  had  been  wretchedly  upset  —  that  was  enough; 
and  Mary's  duty  was  to  join  her  patience  and  her 
prayers  to  those  of  a  disinterested  parent.  He  might 
feel  the  force  of  charms  greater  than  Mary's;  no 
doubt  women  trained  in  the  subtle  Roman  arts  were 
only  too  proud  and  too  happy  to  make  it  easy  for 
him;  and  it  was  very  presuming  in  a  plain  second 

453 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

cousin  to  make  a  wonder  of  the  inevitable.  Mrs. 
Hudson  kept  clear  of  the  reflexion  that  a  mother 
may  forgive  where  a  mistress  may  not,  and  she 
seemed  to  feel  it  a  further  drain  on  her  own  deple 
tion  that  Mary  should  n't  be  glad  to  act  as  a  hand 
maid  without  wages.  She  was  ready  to  hold  her 
breath  so  that  Roderick  might  howl,  if  need  be, 
at  his  ease,  and  she  was  capable  of  seeing  any  one 
else  gasp  for  air  without  a  tremor  of  compassion. 
The  girl  had  now  perhaps  given  some  intimation 
of  her  belief  that  if  constancy  is  the  flower  of  devo 
tion  reciprocity  is  the  guarantee  of  constancy,  and 
Mrs.  Hudson  had  denounced  this  as  arrogant  doc 
trine.  That  she  had  found  it  hard  to  reason  with 
her  protectress,  that  something  was  expected  of  her 
which  she  could  n't  give,  and  that  in  short  he  had 
companionship  in  misfortune  —  these  things  re 
lieved  a  little  the  pressure  of  which  Rowland  was 
conscious. 

The  party  at  Villa  Pandolfini  used  to  sit  in  the 
garden  in  the  evenings,  which  Rowland  almost  always 
spent  with  them.  Their  entertainment  was  in  the 
heavy  scent  of  the  air,  in  the  dim,  far  starlight, 
in  the  crenellated  tower  of  a  neighbouring  villa, 
which  loomed  vaguely  above  them  through  the  warm 
darkness,  and  in  such  conversation  as  depressing 
reflections  permitted.  Roderick,  habited  ahvays  in 
white,  stalked  about  like  a  restless  ghost,  silent  for 
the  most  part,  but  making  from  time  to  time  an  ob 
servation  in  which,  as  it  seemed  to  the  elder  man, 
the  spirit  of  vain  paradox  and  of  loose  pessimism  too 
freely  overflowed.  With  Rowland  alone  he  talked 

454 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

more,  and  as  well  as  ever,  and  even  about  the  things 
that  had  formerly  interested  him;  but,  taking  a 
vicious  twist  always,  it  ended  for  the  most  part  in 
some  abrupt  profession  of  despair  and  disgust.  When 
this  current  set  in  our  friend  straightway  turned  his 
back  and  stopped  his  ears,  and  Roderick  now  wit 
nessed  these  movements  with  perfect  indifference. 
When  the  latter  was  absent  from  the  starlit  circle 
in  the  garden,  as  often  happened,  they  knew  nothing 
of  his  whereabouts:  Rowland  supposed  him  to  be 
in  Florence  but  never  learned  what  he  did  there. 
All  this  was  not  enlivening;  yet  with  an  even,  muf 
fled  tread  the  days  followed  each  other  and  brought 
the  month  of  August  to  a  close.  One  particular  even 
ing  at  this  time  was  admirable;  there  was  a  perfect 
moon,  looking  so  extraordinarily  large  that  it  made 
everything  its  light  fell  on  turn  pale  and  shrink;  the 
heat  was  tempered  by  a  soft  west  wind  and  the  air 
laden  with  the  breath  of  the  early  harvest.  The  hills, 
the  vale  of  the  Arno,  the  yellow  river,  the  domes  of 
Florence,  were  not  so  much  lighted  as  obscured  by 
the  white  glow.  Rowland  had  found  the  two  ladies 
alone  at  the  villa,  and  he  had  dropped  into  a  seat 
as  discreetly  as  if  they  had  been,  as  he  said,  at  a 
"show."  He  felt  hushed  by  the  solemn  splendour 
of  the  scene,  but  he  risked  the  remark  that,  what 
ever  life  might  yet  have  in  store  for  either  of  them, 
this  was  a  night  they  would  never  forget. 

"  It 's  a  night  that  makes  a  success,"  Mary  Gar 
land  replied,  "of  one's  having  lived  at  all." 

"'At  all,'  dear?"  Mrs.  Hudson  echoed.  "You 
surely  have  n't  waited  till  this  evening  to  feel  that 

455 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

. 

you've  lived  very  comfortably!"  And  she  surveyed 
the  scene  as  in  vague  reprehension  and  as  finding 
in  the  accumulated  loveliness  of  the  hour  something 
shameless  and  unholy. 

They  were  silent  after  this  for  some  time,  but  at 
last  Rowland  addressed  to  the  girl  some  tentative 
idle  word.  She  made  no  reply,  and  he  turned  to  look 
at  her.  She  was  sitting  motionless,  with  her  head 
pressed  to  Mrs.  Hudson's  shoulder,  and  the  latter 
lady  was  gazing  at  him  through  the  silvered  dusk  with 
an  air  that  gave  a  sort  of  spectral  solemnity  to  the 
sad  weak  meaning  of  her  eyes.  She  might  have  been 
for  the  moment  a  little  old  malevolent  fairy.  Mary, 
Rowland  perceived  in  an  instant,  was  not  absolutely 
motionless;  some  strange  agitation  had  shaken  her. 
She  was  softly  crying,  or  about  so  to  cry,  and  unable 
to  trust  herself  to  speak.  Rowland  left  his  place  and 
wandered  to  another  part  of  the  garden,  affected  by 
this  sudden  access  and  asking  himself  what  had  de 
termined  it.  Of  women's  weeping  in  general  he  had 
a  developed  dread,  but  this  particular  appearance 
moved  him  to  odd  rejoicing.  When  he  returned  to  his 
place  Mary  had  raised  her  head  and  composed  her 
aspect.  She  came  away  from  Mrs.  Hudson,  and  they 
stood  for  a  short  time  together,  leaning  against  the 
parapet. 

"It  seems  to  you  very  strange,  I  suppose,"  Row 
land  presently  said,  "that  there  should  have  to  be 
anxiety  and  pain  in  such  a  world  as  this." 

"I  used  to  think,"  she  answered,  "that  if  any 
trouble  came  to  me  I  should  bear  it  like  a  stoic.  But 
that  was  at  home,  where  things  don't  speak  to  us  of 

456 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

enjoyment  as  they  do  here.  Here  it 's  such  a  mixture; 
one  does  n't  know  what  to  choose,  what  to  believe. 
Beauty  stands  there  —  beauty  such  as  this  night  and 
this  place  and  all  this  sad  strange  summer  have  been 
so  full  of —  and  it  penetrates  to  one's  soul  and  lodges 
there  and  keeps  saying  that  man  was  n't  made,  as  we 
think  at  home,  to  struggle  so  much  and  miss  so  much, 
but  to  ask  of  life  as  a  matter  of  course  some  beauty 
and  some  charm.  This  place  has  destroyed  any  scrap 
of  consistency  that  I  ever  possessed,  but  even  if  I  must 
myself  say  something  sinful  I  love  it!" 

"If  it 's  sinful,  I  absolve  you  —  in  so  far  as  I  have 
power.  We  should  n't  be  able  to  enjoy,  I  suppose, 
unless  we  could  suffer,  and  in  anything  that 's  worthy 
of  the  name  of  experience  —  that  experience  which  is 
the  real  taste  of  life,  is  n't  it  ?  —  the  mixture  is  of  the 
finest  and  subtlest.  Just  now  and  here  it 's  certainly 
wonderful  enough.  Yet  we  must  take  things  as  much 
as  possible  in  turn." 

His  words  had  a  singular  aptness,  for  he  had  hardly 
uttered  them  when  Roderick  came  out  from  the  house, 
not,  as  appeared,  on  pleasure  bent.  He  stood  for  a 
moment  taking  in  the  effulgence. 

"  It 's  a  very  beautiful  night,  my  son,"  said  his 
mother,  going  to  him  timidly  and  touching  his 
arm. 

He  passed  his  hand  through  his  hair  and  let  it  stay 
there,  clasping  his  thick  locks.  "  Beautiful  ?"  he  cried. 
"Of  course  it's  beautiful!  Everything's  beautiful; 
everything  's  insolent,  defiant,  atrocious  with  beauty. 
Nothing 's  ugly  but  me  —  me  and  my  poor  dead 
brain!" 

457 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Oh,  my  dearest  son,"  pleaded  the  poor  lady; 
"don't  you  feel  any  better?" 

Roderick  made  no  immediate  answer,  but  at  last 
he  spoke  in  a  different  voice.  "I  came  expressly  to 
tell  you  that  you  need  n't  trouble  yourselves  any 
longer  to  wait  for  something  to  turn  up.  Nothing 
will  turn  up.  It 's  all  over.  I  said  when  I  came  here 
I  would  give  it  a  chance.  I  've  given  it  a  chance. 
Have  n't  I,  eh  ?  Have  n't  I,  Rowland  ?  It 's  no  use; 
our  little  experiment 's  a  failure.  Do  with  me  now 
what  you  please.  I  recommend  you  to  set  me  up  there 
at  the  end  of  the  garden  and  shoot  me  dead." 

"I  feel  strongly  inclined,"  said  Rowland  gravely, 
"to  go  and  get  my  revolver." 

"Oh,  mercy  on  us,  what  language!"  cried  Mrs. 
Hudson. 

"Why  not?"  Roderick  went  on.  "This  would  be 
a  lovely  night  for  it,  and  I  should  be  a  lucky  fellow  to 
be  buried  in  this  garden.  But  bury  me  alive  if  you  pre 
fer.  Take  me  back  to  Northampton." 

"Roderick,  will  you  really  come?"  his  mother 
quavered. 

"Why  should  n't  I  go  ?  I  might  as  well  be  there  as 
anywhere  —  reverting  to  idiocy  and  living  on  alms.  I 
can  do  nothing  with  all  this;  perhaps  I  should  really 
like  again  the  opposite  pole.  If  I  'm  to  vegetate  for  the 
rest  of  my  days  I  can  do  it  there  better  than  here." 

"Oh,  come  home,  come  home,"  Mrs.  Hudson 
pleaded,  "and  we  shall  all  be  safe  and  quiet  and 
happy.  My  dearest  son,  come  home  with  your  poor 
little  mother!" 

"Let  us  go  then  —  quickly!" 
458 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

She  flung  herself  on  his  neck  for  gratitude.  "We  '11 
go  to-morrow!  The  Lord  's  very  good  to  me!'' 

Mary  Garland  said  nothing  to  this;  but  she  looked 
at  Rowland,  and  her  eyes  struck  him  as  containing 
a  deep,  an  alarmed  appeal.  He  observed  it  with 
exultation,  but  even  without  it  he  would  have  broken 
into  an  eager  protest. 

"Are  you  serious,  Roderick  ?"  he  demanded. 

"Serious  ?  Of  course  not!  How  can  a  man  with  a 
crack  in  his  brain  be  serious,  how  can  a  damned  fool 
reason  ?  But  I  'm  not  jesting  either;  I  can  no  more 
crack  jokes  than  utter  oracles!" 

"Are  you  willing  to  go  home  ?" 

"Willing?  God  forbid!  I  'm  simply  amenable  to 
force;  if  my  mother  chooses  to  take  me  I  won't  resist. 
I  can't!  I  've  come  to  that!" 

"Let  me  resist  then,"  said  Rowland.  "Go  home 
as  you  're  now  acting  and  talking  ?  I  can't  stand  by 
and  see  it." 

It  may  have  been  true  that  Roderick  had  lost  his 
sense  of  humour,  but  he  scratched  his  head  with  a 
gesture  of  comic  effect.  "You  are  a  funny  man.  I 
should  think  I  would  disgust  you  horribly." 

"Stay  another  year,"  Rowland  simply  said. 

"Doing  nothing?" 

"You  shall  do  more  than  you  've  bargained  for  yet. 
I  'm  responsible  for  your  doing  it." 

"To  whom  are  you  responsible?" 

Rowland,  before  replying,  glanced  at  Mary  Gar 
land,  and  his  glance  made  her  speak  quickly.  "Not 
to  me!" 

"  I  'm  responsible  to  myself,"  he  substituted. 

459 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Ah,  but  my  poor  dear  fellow!"  his  friend  incon 
clusively  demurred. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Mallet,  aren't  you  satisfied?"  asked 
Mrs.  Hudson  in  the  tone  in  which  Niobe  may  have 
addressed  the  avenging  archers  after  she  had  seen  her 
eldest-born  fall.  "  It 's  out  of  all  nature  keeping  him 
here.  When  our  poor  hearts  are  broken,  surely  our 
own  dear  native  land  is  the  place  for  us.  Do  leave 
us  to  ourselves,  sir!" 

This  just  failed  of  being  a  dismissal  in  form,  and 
Rowland  made  a  note  of  it.  Roderick  was  silent  for 
some  moments;  then  suddenly  he  covered  his  face 
with  his  two  hands.  "Take  me,  at  least,  out  of  this 
terrible  Italy,"  he  cried,  "where  everything  mocks  and 
reproaches  and  torments  and  eludes  me!  Take  me 
out  of  this  land  of  impossible  beauty  and  put  me  in 
the  midst  of  ugliness.  Set  me  down  where  nature  is 
coarse  and  flat  and  men  and  manners  are  vulgar. 
There  must  be  something  ugly  enough  in  Germany. 
Pack  me  off,  for  goodness'  sake,  there!" 

Rowland  answered  that  if  he  wished  to  leave  Italy 
the  thing  might  be  arranged;  he  would  think  it  over 
and  submit  a  proposal  on  the  morrow.  He  suggested 
to  Mrs.  Hudson  in  consequence  that  she  should  spend 
the  autumn  in  Switzerland,  where  she  would  find  a 
fine  tonic  climate,  plenty  of  fresh  milk  and  several 
very  inexpensive  pensions.  Switzerland  of  course  was 
not  reputed  ugly,  but  one  could  n't  have  everything! 

Mrs.  Hudson  neither  thanked  him  nor  assented, 
but  she  wept  and  packed  her  trunks.  Rowland  had  a 
theory,  after  the  scene  which  led  to  these  preparations, 
that  Mary  was  weary  of  waiting  for  Roderick  to  come 

460 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

to  his  senses,  that  the  faith  which  had  borne  him  com 
pany  on  the  tortuous  march  he  was  leading  it  had 
begun  to  falter  and  droop.  This  theory  was  not  vitiated 
by  a  word  falling  from  her  on  the  day  before  that 
on  which  Mrs.  Hudson  had  settled  to  leave  Florence. 

"Cousin  Sarah,  the  other  evening,"  she  said, 
"asked  you  to  leave  us  to  ourselves.  I  think  she 
hardly  knew  what  she  was  saying,  and  I  hope  you  've 
not  taken  offence." 

"By  no  means;  but  I  honestly  believe  that  my 
leaving  you  would  contribute  greatly  to  Mrs.  Hudson's 
comfort.  I  can  be  your  hidden  providence,  you  know; 
I  can  watch  you  at  a  distance  and  come  upon  the 
scene  at  critical  moments." 

The  girl  looked  at  everything  but  himself,  then 
spoke  with  sudden  earnestness,  "  I  particularly  want 
you  to  come  with  us!" 

It  need  hardly  be  added  that  after  this  Rowland 
went  with  them. 


XXIII 

HE  had  a  very  friendly  memory  of  a  little  mountain 
inn,  accessible  with  moderate  trouble  from  Lucerne, 
where  he  had  once  spent  ten  idle  unadventurous  days. 
He  had  at  that  time  been  trudging,  knapsack  on  back, 
over  half  Switzerland,  and,  having  had  a  sturdy  con 
science  about  covering  ground,  it  was  no  shame  to 
him  to  confess  that  he  was  mortally  tired.  The  inn 
of  which  I  speak  appeared  to  have  but  recently  ex 
changed  the  care  of  the  stalled  ox  for  that  of  the 
hungry  tourist;  but  Rowland  at  least  had  felt  him 
self  only  a  feebler  ruminant.  It  stood  in  a  high 
shallow  valley,  with  flower-strewn  Alpine  meadows 
sloping  down  to  it  from  the  base  of  certain  rugged 
rocks  whose  outlines  were  grim  against  the  late  sky. 
Our  friend  had  seen  grandet  places  that  pleased  him 
less,  and  whenever  afterwards  he  wished  to  think  of 
Alpine  opportunities  at  their  best  he  recalled  this 
grassy  concave  among  the  steeper  ridges  and  the 
August  days  passed  in  resting  at  his  length  in  the 
lee  of  a  sun-warmed  boulder,  with  the  light  cool  air 
astir  about  his  temples,  the  wafted  odours  of  the  pines 
in  his  nostrils,  the  tinkle  of  the  cattle-bells  in  his  ears, 
the  vast  procession  of  the  mountain-hours  before  his 
eyes  and  a  volume  of  Wordsworth  in  his  pocket.  His 
face,  on  the  Swiss  hillsides,  had  been  scorched  to  a 
brilliant  hue,  and  his  bed  was  a  pallet  in  a  loft,  which 
he  shared  with  a  German  botanist  of  colossal  stature 

462 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

—  every  inch  of  whom  quaked  at  an  open  window. 
These  had  been  drawbacks  to  selfish  ease,  but  Row 
land  hardly  cared  whether  or  how  he  was  lodged,  for 
his  place  of  preference  and  of  main  abode  was  under 
the  sky,  on  the  crest  of  a  slope  that  looked  at  the 
Jungfrau.  He  remembered  all  this  on  leaving  Flor 
ence  with  his  friends,  and  he  reflected  that,  as  the 
midseason  was  over,  accommodations  would  be  more 
ample  and  charges  more  modest.  He  communicated 
with  his  old  friend  the  landlord,  and  while  September 
was  yet  young  his  companions  established  themselves 
under  his  guidance  in  this  hollow  of  the  hills. 

He  had  crossed  the  Saint-Gotthard  Pass  with  them 
in  the  same  vehicle.  During  the  journey  from  Flor 
ence,  and  especially  during  this  portion  of  it,  the 
cloud  that  hung  over  the  little  party  had  almost 
cleared,  and  they  had  looked  at  each  other,  in  the 
close  intimacy  of  train  and  vettura,  without  either 
the  retributive  or  the  argumentative  glare.  It  was 
impossible  not  to  hang  upon  the  perpetual  rich  pic 
ture  of  Apennine  and  Alp,  and  there  was  a  tacit 
agreement  among  the  travellers  to  sink  every  other 
consciousness.  The  effect  of  this  discretion  was  of 
the  best;  it  made  of  them  shipwrecked  swimmers 
who  had  clambered  upon  a  raft.  Roderick  sat  with 
a  fascinated  far-reaching  stare  and  a  perfect  docil 
ity  of  attitude.  He  concerned  himself  not  a  particle 
about  the  itinerary  or  the  wayside  arrangements; 
but  if  he  took  no  trouble  he  also  gave  quite  touch- 
ingly  little.  His  friend  tacitly  compared  him  to  some 
noble  young  emigre  of  the  French  Terror,  seized  be 
fore  reaching  the  frontier  and  showing,  while  brought 

463 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

back,  a  white  face,  indescribable,  that  anticipated 
the  guillotine.  He  assented  to  everything  that  was 
proposed,  and  was  perched  apparently  on  heights 
of  contemplation  inaccessible  to  the  others.  His 
mother  rarely  removed  her  eyes  from  him;  and,  if  a 
while  before  this  would  greatly  have  irritated  him, 
he  now  seemed  wholly  unconscious  of  her  observa 
tion  and  deeply  indifferent  to  anything  that  might 
befall  him.  They  spent  a  couple  of  days  on  the  Lake 
of  Como,  at  an  hotel  with  white  porticoes  smothered 
in  oleander  and  myrtle  and  terrace-steps  leading 
down  to  little  boats  under  striped  awnings.  They 
agreed  it  was  the  earthly  paradise,  and  they  passed 
the  mornings  in  strolls  through  the  cedarn  alleys 
of  classic  villas  and  the  evenings  afloat  beneath  the 
stars,  in  a  circle  of  outlined  mountains,  to  the  music 
of  silver-trickling  oars.  One  afternoon  the  two 
young  men  wandered  away  together  as  they  had 
wandered  of  old.  They  followed  the  winding  foot 
path  that  led  toward  Como,  close  to  the  lakeside, 
past  the  gates  of  villas  and  the  walls  of  vineyards, 
through  little  hamlets  propped  on  a  dozen  arches 
and  bathing  their  feet  and  their  pendent  tatters  in 
the  grey-green  ripple;  past  frescoed  walls  and  crum 
bling  campanili  and  grassy  village  piazzettas  and 
the  mouth  of  soft  ravines  that  wound  upward,  through 
belts  of  swinging  vine  and  vaporous  olive  and  wide- 
armed  chequering  chestnut,  to  high  ledges  where 
white  chapels  gleamed  amid  the  paler  boskage  and 
bare  clifF-surfaces,  with  their  blistered  lips,  drank 
in  the  liquid  light.  It  all  was  consummately  ro 
mantic;  it  was  the  Italy  we  know  from  the  steel- 

464 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

engravings  in  old  keepsakes  and  annuals,  from  the 
vignettes  on  music-sheets  and  the  drop-curtains  at 
theatres;  an  Italy  we  can  never  confess  ourselves 

—  in  spite  of  our  own  changes  and  of  all  the  local 
perversions  and  the  lost  causes,  as  well  the  gained 

—  to  have  ceased  to  need  and  to  believe  in.    The 
companions  turned  aside  from  the  little  paved  foot 
way    that    clambered    and   dipped  and  wound  and 
doubled   beside  the  lake,  and  stretched  themselves 
idly  beneath  a  fig-tree  on  a  grassy  headland.    Row 
land  had  never  known  anything  so  divinely  sooth 
ing  as  the   dreamy  softness  of  these  early  autumn 
hours.    The  iridescent  mountains  shut  him  in;    the 
small  waves  beneath  him  fretted  the  white  pebbles 
at  the  laziest   intervals;    the  festooned  vines  above 
him  swayed  just  visibly  in  the   all  but    motionless 
air. 

Roderick  lay  observing  it  all  with  his  arms  thrown 
back  and  his  hands  under  his  head.  "This  suits 
me,"  he  said  at  last;  "I  could  be  happy  here  and 
forget  everything.  Why  not  stay  here  for  ever?" 
He  kept  his  position  a  long  time  and  seemed  lost  in 
his  thoughts.  Rowland  spoke  to  him,  but  he  made 
vague  answers;  finally  he  closed  his  eyes.  It  seemed 
to  Rowland  also  a  place  of  irresistible  persuasion, 
with  the  very  taste  of  the  lotus  in  the  air.  Sud 
denly  Roderick  turned  over  on  his  face  and  buried 
it  in  his  arms.  The  movement  had  been  a  nervous 
spasm,  but  our  friend  nevertheless  winced,  on  his 
jerking  himself  round  again  and  sitting  up,  at  the 
sight  of  his  suffused  eyes.  Roderick  turned  to  him, 
stretching  out  both  hands  to  the  lake  and  moun- 

465 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tains  and  shaking  them  as  from  a  heart  too  full  for 
utterance. 

"Pity  me,  my  friend;  pity  me!"  he  presently 
cried.  "Look  at  this  lovely  world  and  think  what 
it  must  be  to  be  dead  to  it!" 

"Dead?"    poor  Rowland  temporised. 

"Dead,  dead;  dead  and  buried!  Buried  in  an 
open  grave  where  you  lie  staring  up  at  the  sailing 
clouds,  smelling  the  waving  flowers  and  hearing  all 
nature  live  and  grow  above  you.  That 's  the  way  I 
feel." 

"  I  'm  very  glad  to  hear  it.  Death  of  that  sort 's 
very  near  to  resurrection." 

"It's  too  horrible,"  Roderick  went  on;  "it  has 
all  come  over  me  here.  If  I  were  not  ashamed  I 
could  shed  a  bushel  of  tears.  For  one  hour  of  what 
I  have  been  I  'd  give  up  —  everything  I  'm  not." 

"Never  mind  what  you  'have*  been;  be  some 
thing  better!" 

"I  shall  never  be  anything  again;  it's  no  use 
talking!  But  I  don't  know  what  secret  spring  has 
been  touched  since  I  've  lain  here.  Something  in 
my  heart  seems  suddenly  to  open  and  let  in  a  flood 
of  beauty  and  desire.  I  know  what  I  Ve  lost  and 
I  think  it  horrible.  Mind  you,  I  know  it,  I  feel  it. 
Remember  that  hereafter.  Don't  say  that  he  was 
stupefied  and  senseless,  that  his  perception  was 
dulled  or  his  aspiration  dead.  Say  he  trembled  in 
every  nerve  with  a  sense  of  the  beauty  and  sweet 
ness  of  life;  say  he  rebelled  and  protested  and  strug 
gled;  say  he  was  buried  alive,  with  his  eyes  open 
and  his  heart  beating  to  madness;  say  he  clung  to 

466 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

every  blade  of  grass  and  every  wayside  thorn  as  he 
passed;  say  it  was  the  most  pathetic  thing  you  ever 
beheld.  Say,"  he  wound  up,  "  that  it  was  a  sacrifice 
and  a  scandal." 

Rowland  fairly  turned  pale  as  their  eyes  met. 
"  I  think  that  if  you  're  not  mad  you  '11  at  least  soon 
make  me  so." 

"Oh,  I  can  trust  you,  old  chap,  and  I  assure  you 
I  can  be  trusted.  I  've  never  been  saner.  I  don't 
want  to  be  bad  company,  and  in  this  beautiful  spot, 
at  this  delightful  hour,  it  seems  an  outrage  to  break 
the  charm.  But  I  'm  bidding  farewell  to  Italy,  to 
beauty,  to  honour,  to  life.  I  only  want  to  assure  you 
that  I  know  what  I  lose.  I  know  it  in  every  pulse, 
in  every  inch  of  me.  Here  where  these  things  are 
all  loveliest  I  take  leave  of  them.  Good-bye,  adore- 
able  world!" 

During  their  slow  ascent  into  Switzerland  he  ab 
sented  himself  much  of  the  time  from  the  carriage 
and  rambled,  far  in  advance,  along  the  zigzags  of 
the  road  and  in  constant  deviation  from  them.  He 
showed  a  tireless  activity;  his  light  weight  and  long 
legs  carried  him  everywhere,  and  his  friends  saw 
him  skirt  the  edge  of  plunging  chasms,  loosen  the 
stones  on  vast  steep  slopes  and  lift  himself  against 
the  sky  from  the  top  of  rocky  pinnacles.  Mary  Gar 
land  took  scarcely  less  to  her  feet,  but  she  remained 
near  the  carriage  to  be  with  Mrs.  Hudson,  while 
Rowland  remained  near  it  to  be  with  Mrs.  Hudson's 
companion.  He  measured  the  great  road  by  her 
side  and  found  himself  sorry  the  Alps  were  so  low 
and  that  their  walk  was  not  to  last  a  week.  She  was 

467 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

exhilarated;  she  rejoiced  in  their  adventure;  in 
the  way  of  mountains,  until  within  the  last  few  weeks, 
she  had  seen,  for  a  near  view,  nothing  greater  than 
Mounts  Holyoke  and  Tom  and  the  mild  Alban  hills, 
so  that  she  recognised  in  the  Alps  the  just  ground 
of  their  glory.  Rowland  had  noted  her  own  vision 
of  natural  objects,  but  he  was  struck  afresh  with 
her  quick  eye  for  them  and  with  her  knowledge  of 
plants  and  rocks  and  "formations."  At  that  season 
many  of  the  wild  flowers  had  gone,  but  others  lin 
gered,  and  Mary  never  failed  to  "spot "  them  in  their 
outlying  corners.  She  gave  herself  up  to  them,  inter 
ested  when  they  were  old  friends  and  charmed  when 
they  were  new.  Her  foot  was  light  in  quest  of  them 
and  she  had  soon  covered  the  front  seat  of  the 
carriage  with  a  tangle  of  strange  vegetation.  Row 
land  .had  always  supposed  himself  to  dislike  the 
race  of  weed-gathering,  vase-dressing  women,  dis 
posers,  over  the  domestic  scene,  of  bristling,  tick 
ling  greenery;  but  he  was  none  the  less  alert  in  her 
service  and  gathered  for  her  several  fine  specimens 
which  had  at  first  seemed  inaccessible.  One  of  these 
indeed  had  appeared  an  easier  prize  than  it  was 
likely  to  prove,  and  he  had  paused  a  moment  at  the 
base  of  the  little  peak  on  which  it  grew,  measuring 
the  risk  of  further  pursuit.  Suddenly,  as  he  stood 
there,  he  remembered  Roderick's  defiance  of  danger 
and  of  Christina  Light  during  that  sharp  moment  at 
the  Coliseum,  and  he  was  seized  with  a  strong  desire 
to  test  the  quality  of  his  own  companion.  She  had  just 
scrambled  up  a  grassy  slope  near  him  and  had  seen 
that  the  flower  was  out  of  reach.  As  he  prepared  to 

468 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

approach  it  she  called  to  him  eagerly  to  stop  and  yield 
to  the  impossibility.  Poor  Rowland,  whose  interest  in 
her  had  so  much  more  nourished  itself  on  plain  fare 
than  snatched  at  any  golden  apple  of  reward,  en 
joyed  immensely  the  sense  of  her  caring  for  three 
minutes  what  should  become  of  him.  He  was  the 
least  brutal  of  men,  but  for  a  moment  he  was  per 
fectly  indifferent  to  her  nerves. 

"I  can  get  the  flower,"  he  called  to  her.     "Will 
you  trust  me  ?" 

"I  don't  want  it;    I'd  rather  not  have  it!"    she 
cried. 

"Will  you  trust  me?"  he  repeated,  looking  at 
her  hard. 

She  looked  at  him  in  return  and  then  at  the  flower; 
he  wondered  whether  she  would  shriek  and  swoon  as 
Christina  had  done.  "  I  wish  it  were  so  mething  better ! " 
she  said  simply;  and  she  stood  watching  him  while 
he  began  to  clamber.  Rowland  was  not  a  .trained 
acrobat,  and  his  enterprise  was  difficult;  but  he  kept 
his  wits  about  him,  made  the  most  of  narrow  foot 
holds  and  coigns  of  vantage  and  at  last  secured  his 
prize.  He  managed  to  stick  it  into  his  button-hole, 
after  which  he  worked  his  way  down  again.  There 
was  more  than  one  chance  for  an  ugly  fall,  but  he  had 
not  lost  his  head  or  his  hold.  It  was  doubtless  not 
gracefully  done,  but  it  was  done,  and  that  was  all  he 
had  proposed  to  himself.  He  was  red  in  the  face 
when  he  offered  Mary  the  flower,  and  she  was  visibly 
pale.  She  had  kept  her  eyes  on  him  without  moving. 
All  this  had  passed  without  the  knowledge  of  Mrs. 
Hudson,  who  was  dozing  beneath  the  hood  of  the 

469 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

carnage.  Mary's  eyes  did  not  perhaps  quite  display 
the  ardent  admiration  anciently  offered  to  the  victor 
by  the  queen  of  beauty  at  a  tournament;  but  they  told 
him  that  his  existence  had  for  the  time  mattered  to 
her.  He  liked  having  proof  of  this  to  put  in  his  pocket, 
very  much  as  a  "handsome"  subscriber  to  an  import 
ant  cause  likes  an  acknowledgement  of  his  cheque. 
"Why  did  you  do  that  ?"  she  asked  gravely. 

He  hesitated,  conscious  of  the  deep  desire  to  answer 
"Because  I  love  you!"  But  he  had  not  kept  his  head 
before  to  lose  it  now.  He  lowered  his  pitch  and  re 
plied  simply:  "Because  I  wanted  to  do  something 
for  you." 

"Suppose  you  had  broken  your  neck." 

"  I  believed  I  should  n't.  And  you  believed  it,  I 
think." 

"I  believed  nothing.  I  simply  trusted  you,  as  you 
asked  me." 

"Quod  erat  demonstrandum!"  cried  Rowland.  "I 
think  you  know  Latin." 

When  our  four  friends  were  established  in  what  I 
have  called  their  hollow  in  the  hills  there  was  much 
scrambling  over  slopes  both  grassy  and  stony,  a 
good  deal  of  flower-plucking  on  narrow  ledges,  a 
great  many  long  walks  and,  thanks  to  the  tonic 
mountain  air,  not  a  little  relief  and  oblivion.  Mrs. 
Hudson  was  reduced  to  forgetting,  above  all,  that  the 
poison  of  Europe  —  as  she  knew  Europe  —  might 
lurk  in  the  breeze,  and  even  to  admitting  that  the  eggs 
of  Engelthal  were  almost  as  fresh  and  the  cream 
almost  as  thick  as  those  of  the  Connecticut  Valley. 
She  was  certainly  more  in  her  element  than  she  had 

470 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

been  in  Italy;  having  always  lived  in  the  country 
she  had  missed  in  Rome  and  Florence  that  social 
solitude  mitigated  by  bushes  and  rocks,  primarily 
dear  to  the  true  New  England  temperament.  The 
little  unpainted  Oberland  inn,  with  its  plank  parti 
tions,  its  milk-pans  standing  in  the  sun,  its  "help," 
in  the  form  of  angular  young  women  of  the  country 
side,  reminded  her  of  places  of  summer  sojourn  in  her 
native  land;  and  the  beautiful  historic  chambers  of 
Villa  Pandolfini  passed  from  her  conscience  without 
a  regret  and  without  having  in  the  least  modified  her 
conception  of  the  house  submissive  to  "keeping."  If 
Roderick,  on  the  other  hand,  had  changed  his  sky, 
he  had  still  not  changed  his  mind;  he  was  not  sen 
sibly  nearer  to  having  got  back  into  the  traces  than  he 
had  shown  himself  during  his  declaration  of  despair 
by  the  Italian  lakeside.  He  now  kept  this  despair  to 
himself  and  went  decently  enough  about  the  ordinary 
business  of  life;  but  it  was  easy  to  see  that  he  wasn't, 
in  the  new  phrase,  "there"  —  his  meekness  was  so 
mechanical  and  his  present  motives  somehow  so 
inscrutable.  In  that  sad  half-hour  on  the  Como  pro 
montory  there  had  been  a  fierce  truth  under  the  im 
pression  of  which  Rowland  found  himself  at  last 
forswearing  criticism  and  censure.  He  began  to  feel 
it  quite  idle  to  appeal  to  his  comrade's  will;  there  was 
no  will  left  —  its  place  was  a  mocking  void.  This 
view  of  the  case  indeed  was  occasionally  contravened 
by  certain  indications  on  Roderick's  part  of  the  sur 
viving  faculty  of  resistance  to  disagreeable  obligation : 
one  might  still  have  said,  if  one  had  been  disposed  to 
improve  the  occasion  at  any  hazard,  that  there  was  a 

471 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

method  in  his  madness,  that  his  moral  energy  had  its 
sleeping  and  its  waking  hours,  and  that  in  an  attractive 
cause  it  would  yet  again  be  capable  of  rising  with  the 
dawn.  This  name,  however,  for  a  possible  knock  at  his 
door,  what  was  it,  truly,  but  another  word  for  an  in 
spiration  ?  Oh,  for  such  a  visitor,  the  appealing  plastic 
idea,  he  would  spring  up  and  open  wide  his  eyes  and 
look  out  at  the  dawn;  but  where  was  the  precious 
pebble  to  come  from  that  might  be  cast  with  the  right 
sharp  tap  at  his  window-pane  ?  It  was  now  impossible, 
at  all  events,  not  to  be  indulgent  to  a  consciousness 
that  had  so  ceased  to  be  aggressive  —  not  to  forgive 
much  apathy  to  a  temper  that  had  turned  its  rough 
side  inward.  Roderick  said  frankly  that  Switzerland 
made  him  less  miserable  than  Italy,  and  that  the  Alps 
were  less  of  a  reproach  to  idle  skilled  hands  than  the 
Apennines.  He  went  in  for  long  rambles,  generally 
alone,  and  was  very  fond  of  climbing  into  dizzy  places 
where  no  sound  could  overtake  him  and  there, 
stretched  at  his  length  on  the  never-trodden  moss,  of 
pulling  his  hat  over  his  eyes  and  lounging  away  the 
hours  in  perfect  immobility.  Rowland  was  some 
times  the  associate  of  these  walks,  for  if  his  friend 
never  directly  proposed  it  he  yet  as  little  visibly 
resented  it;  and  the  only  way  at  present  to  treat  him 
was  as  a  graceful,  an  almost  genial,  a  certainly  harm 
less  eccentric,  with  whom  one  assumed  that  all  things 
were  well  and  held  one's  tongue  about  the  prosperity 
he  had  forfeited,  or  maintained  to  any  questioner  — 
much  rejoicing,  for  the  time,  there  were  none  —  that 
such  were  the  interlunar  swoons  of  the  true  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  false  artist,  and  that  the  style 

472 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

of  genius  was  as  much  in  them  as  in  the  famous 
Homeric  nod.  His  interest  in  Mary's  relations  with 
her  cousin  had  lost  meanwhile  none  of  its  point, 
though  mystified  as  he  was  on  all  sides  he  found 
nothing  penetrable  here.  After  their  arrival  at  Engel- 
thal  Roderick  appeared  to  care  more  for  her  society 
than  he  had  done  hitherto,  and  this  revival  of  appetite 
could  n't  fail  to  come  home  to  their  friend.  They  sat 
together  and  strolled  together,  and  she  often  read 
aloud  to  him.  One  day,  on  their  arrival  at  luncheon, 
after  he  had  been  lying  half  the  morning  at  her  feet 
in  the  shadow  of  a  rock,  Rowland  asked  him  what  she 
had  been  reading. 

"I  don't  know,"  Roderick  said;  "I  don't  heed  the 
sense."  Mary  heard  this  and  Rowland  looked  at 
her,  but  it  only  made  her  look  hard  at  Roderick.  "I 
listen  to  Mary,"  he  continued,  "for  the  sake  of  her 
voice.  It 's  soothing  and  stupefying  —  it 's  really 
demoralising."  At  this  the  girl  coloured  and  turned 
away. 

Rowland,  as  we  know,  had  speculated  much,  in  the 
interest  of  his  ultimate  chance,  had  asked  himself  if 
her  constancy  had  been  proof;  and  that  demand,  on 
her  lips,  which  had  brought  about  his  own  departure 
for  Switzerland  had  seemed  almost  equivalent  to  a 
confession  that  she  needed  his  help  to  keep  her  faith. 
He  had,  in  his  high  modesty,  not  risked  the  sup 
position  that  Mary  could  contrast  him  with  Roderick 
to  the  advantage  of  his  personal  charm;  but  his  con 
sciousness  of  duty  done  had  a  hand  to  hold  out  for  any 
such  stray  grain  of  enthusiasm  as  might  have  crumbled 
away  from  her  estimate  of  his  companion.  If  some 

473 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

day  she  had  declared  in  a  sudden  burst  of  bitterness 
that  she  was  completely  disillusioned  and  that  she 
gave  up  her  recreant  lover  our  friend's  expectation 
would  have  gone  half-way  to  meet  her.  And  certainly, 
if  her  troubled  spirit  had  taken  this  course,  no  gener 
ous  critic,  he  reasoned,  would  have  pronounced  her 
vain.  She  had  been  offered  an  extent  of  cold  shoulder 
on  which  few  girls  could  have  schooled  themselves  to 
rest  their  eyes  so  long.  There  were  girls  indeed  the 
beauty  of  whose  nature,  like  that  of  Burd  Helen  in  the 
ballad,  lay  in  clinging  to  the  man  of  their  love  through 
bush  and  brier  and  in  bowing  their  head  to  all  hard 
usage.  That  behaviour  had  of  course  a  grace  of  its 
own,  but  Rowland  was  far  from  seeing  it  as  proper  to 
Mary  Garland.  She  asked  something  for  what  she 
gave,  and  he  was  yet  to  make  out  what  had  been 
given  her.  She  believed  in  the  conquests  of  ambition, 
and  would  surely  never  long  persuade  herself  that  it 
was  as  interesting  to  see  them  missed  —  even  help 
lessly  and  pathetically  —  as  to  see  them  strenuously 
reached.  Rowland  passed,  before  he  had  done,  an 
angry  day;  for  he  had  not  been  able  to  stifle  a  sense 
that  she  had  in  a  manner — how  did  he  like  to  put  it? 
—  "transferred  her  esteem"  to  him.  And  yet  here 
she  was  throwing  herself  back  into  Roderick's  arms 
at  his  slightest  overture  —  so  that  a  fatuous  man 
(which,  thank  goodness,  he  was  n't)  might  almost 
have  called  her  a  coquette,  or  at  least  have  asked  her 
what  she  "meant."  He  stated  to  himself  that  his 
position  was  abject  and  that  all  the  philosophy  he 
could  bring  to  bear  upon  it  would  make  it  neither 
honourable  nor  comfortable.  He  would  go  away  and 

474 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

cut  it  short.  He  did  n't  go  away;  he  simply  took  a 
long  walk,  made  an  absence  of  hours,  and  on  his 
return  found  Mary  sitting  out  in  the  moonlight  with 
their  friend. 

Communing  with  himself  during  the  restless 
ramble  in  question,  he  had  determined  that  he  would 
at  last  cease  to  observe,  to  heed  or  to  care  for  what 
these  two  young  persons  might  do  or  might  not  do 
together.  Nevertheless  some  three  days  afterwards, 
the  opportunity  presenting  itself,  he  deliberately 
broached  the  subject  with  Roderick.  He  felt  it  incon 
sistent  and  faint-hearted;  it  was  an  allowance  to 
fingers  that  itched  to  handle  forbidden  fruit.  But  he 
said  to  himself  that  it  was  really  more  logical  to 
return  to  the  question  than  to  drop  it,  for  they  had 
formerly  discussed  these  mysteries  sharply  enough. 
Was  n't  it  perfectly  reasonable  that  he  should  wish  to 
know  the  sequel  to  the  situation  Roderick  had  then 
delineated  ?  Roderick  had  made  him  promises,  and 
it  was  to  be  expected  that  he  should  wish  to  ascertain 
how  the  promises  had  been  kept.  So  he  took  occasion 
to  break  ground  on  the  morrow  of  the  day  just  men 
tioned.  "I  imagine  you're  not  sorry  at  present  to 
have  allowed  yourself  to  be  dissuaded  from  putting  an 
end  to  your  affair  with  your  cousin."  He  liked  some 
how  calling  their  engagement  an  affair. 

Roderick  eyed  him  with  the  vague  and  absent 
look  lately  habitual  to  his  face.  "Dissuaded  ?" 

"Don't  you  remember  that  in  Rome  you  wished  to 
break  off,  and  that  I  urged  you  to  hold  fast,  on  the 
contrary  —  thin  as  your  link  appeared  to  have  be 
come  ?  I  wanted  you  to  see  what  would  come,  for 

475 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

you,  of  your  taking  no  first  step.  If  I  'm  not  mis 
taken  you  're  now  reconciled  to  your  having  let 
things  alone." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Roderick,  "I  remember  what  you 
said;  you  made  it  a  kind  of  personal  favour  to  your 
self  that  I  should  not  clear  anything  up.  I  consented, 
but  afterwards,  when  I  thought  of  it,  your  attitude 
struck  me  as  having  its  oddity.  Had  it  ever  been 
seen  before  ?  —  a  man  asking  another  man  to  gratify 
him,  in  such  a  case  —  I  mean  the  case  of  such  an 
attractive  girl  —  by  still  blocking  the  way." 

"Well,  my  view  was  about  as  selfish  as  another," 
said  Rowland.  "One  man  puts  his  selfishness  into 
this  thing,  and  one  into  that.  It  would  n't  at  all 
have  suited  me  to  see  your  cousin  in  low  spirits." 

"But  you  liked  her  —  you  admired  her,  eh?  So 
you  intimated." 

"I  admire  her  extremely." 

"It  was  your  originality  then  —  to  do  you  justice 
you  've  a  great  deal  of  a  certain  sort  —  to  wish 
her  happiness  secured  in  just  that  fashion.  Many 
a  man  would  have  liked  better  himself  to  make  the 
woman  he  admired  happy,  and  would  have  wel 
comed  her  low  spirits  as  an  opening  for  sympathy. 
You  were  very  quaint  and  unexpected  —  though 
I  'm  bound  to  say  very  reasonable  and  even  very 
charming  —  about  it." 

"So  be  it!"  said  Rowland.  "The  question  is 
Are  n't  you  glad  I  was  all  those  interesting  things  ? 
Are  n't  you  finding  much  of  your  old  feeling  for 
your  cousin  now  come  back  to  you  ?" 

"I  don't  pretend  to  say.  When  she  arrived  in 
476 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

Rome  I  discovered  I  had  ceased  to  care  for  her,  and 
I  honestly  proposed  that  we  should  have  no  hum 
bug  about  it.  If  you,  on  the  contrary,  thought  there 
was  something  to  be  gained  by  having  a  little  hum 
bug  I  was  willing  to  try  it!  I  don't  see  that  the  situ 
ation  is  really  changed.  Mary  is  all  she  ever  was 
—  all  the  cardinal  virtues,  and  if  possible  more  than 
all.  But  she  does  n't,  poor  dear,  in  the  least  interest 
me  —  so  what 's  a  fellow  to  do  ?  Nothing  does  in 
terest  me  —  not  really  —  of  course,  and  how  can 
I  pretend  she  's  a  brilliant  exception  ?  The  only 
difference  is  that  I  don't  care  now  whether  she  in 
terests  me  or  not.  Of  course  marrying  such  a  use 
less  lout  as  I  am  is  out  of  the  question  for  any 
woman,  and  I  should  pay  Mary  a  poor  compliment 
to  assume  that  she  's  in  a  hurry  to  celebrate  our 
nuptials." 

"Oh,  you'll  do  —  you're  in  love!"  Rowland  not 
very  logically  answered.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
this  assertion  was  made  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
hearing  his  companion  deny  it. 

But  it  quite  failed  of  its  aim.  Roderick  gave  a 
liberal  shrug  of  his  shoulders  and  an  irresponsible 
toss  of  his  head.  "Call  it  what  you  please!  I  *m  past 
caring  for  the  names  of  things." 

Rowland  had  not  only  failed  of  logic,  he  had  also 
failed  of  candour.  He  believed  not  the  least  little 
mite  that  Roderick  was  in  love;  he  had  only  argued 
the  false  to  learn  the  true.  The  "true  "  was  then  that 
this  troubled  youth  was  again,  despite  everything,  in 
some  degree  under  a  charm,  and  that  one  could  n't  be 
so  ministered  to  without  either  liking  it  or  hating  it. 

477 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Roderick  might  say  what  he  would,  he  did  n't  hate 
it.  So  it  came  round  to  her  having,  behind  every 
thing,  an  insidious  art.  Rowland  liked,  for  his  part, 
to  think  of  her  insidious  art.  Since  she  had  asked 
him  as  a  favour  to  herself,  at  any  rate,  to  come  with 
them  to  Switzerland,  he  thought  she  might  by  this 
time  have  let  him  know  if  he  seemed  to  have  done 
her  a  service.  The  days  passed  without  her  doing 
so,  and  at  last  he  walked  away  to  an  isolated  emi 
nence  some  five  miles  from  the  inn  and  murmured 
to  the  silent  rocks  that  she  was  ungrateful.  Listen 
ing  nature  appeared  not  to  contradict  him,  so  that 
on  the  morrow  he  asked  the  girl  with  a  touch  of 
melancholy  malice  whether  it  struck  her  that  his 
deflexion  from  his  other  plan  had  been  attended 
with  brilliant  results. 

"Why,  we're  delighted  you're  with  us!"  she 
simply  answered. 

He  was  anything  but  satisfied  with  this;  it  seemed 
to  imply  that  she  had  forgotten  how  she  had  put  it 
to  him  that  he  would  particularly  oblige  her.  He 
reminded  her  of  her  request  and  recalled  the  place 
and  time.  "That  evening  on  the  terrace,  late,  after 
Mrs.  Hudson  had  gone  to  bed,  and  Roderick  being 
absent." 

She  perfectly  remembered,  but  the  memory  seemed 
to  trouble  her.  "I  'm  afraid  your  kindness  has  been 
a  great  charge  upon  you  then.  You  wanted  very 
much  to  do  something  else." 

"I  wanted  above  all  things  to  do  what  you  would 
like,  and  I  made  no  sacrifice.  But  if  I  had  made  an 
immense  one  it  would  be  more  than  made  up  to  me 

478 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

by  any  assurance  that  I  've  helped  Roderick  to  better 
conditions." 

She  was  silent  a  while,  and  then,  "Why  do  you 
ask  me  ?"  she  said.  "You  're  able  to  judge  quite  as 
well  as  I." 

Rowland  cast  about  him;  he  desired  to  justify 
himself  in  the  most  veracious  manner.  "The  truth 
is  I  'm  afraid  I  care  only  in  the  second  place  for 
Roderick's  holding  up  his  head.  What  I  care  for  in 
the  first  place  is  your  tranquillity  and  security." 

"  I  don't  know  why  that  should  be,"  she  returned : 
"I  've  certainly  done  nothing  to  make  you  so  much 
my  friend.  If  you  were  to  tell  me  you  intend  to  leave 
us  to-morrow  I  'm  afraid  that  I  should  n't  venture 
to  ask  you  to  stay.  But  whether  you  go  or  stay,  let 
us  not  talk  of  Roderick." 

"Then  that,"  said  Rowland,  "doesn't  answer 
my  question.  Is  he  better?" 

"No!"  she  brought  out,  and  turned  away. 

He  was  careful  not  to  tell  her  he  intended  to  leave 
them. 


XXIV 

ONE  day  shortly  after  this,  as  the  two  young  men  sat 
at  the  inn  door  watching  the  sunset,  which  on  that 
evening  was  very  rich  and  clear,  Rowland  made  an 
attempt  to  sound  his  companion's  actual  sentiment 
touching  Christina  Light.  "  I  wonder  where  she  is," 
he  permitted  himself  to  begin,  "and  what  sort  of  a 
life  she  's  leading  her  Prince." 

Roderick  at  first  made  no  response.  He  was  watch 
ing  a  figure  on  the  summit  of  some  distant  rocks 
opposite.  The  figure  was  apparently  descending  into 
the  valley,  and  in  relief  against  the  crimson  screen 
of  the  western  sky  it  looked  gigantic.  "Christina 
Light?"  he  at  last  repeated,  as  if  rousing  himself 
from  a  reverie.  "Where  she  is?  It's  'rum'  how 
little  I  care!" 

"Have  you  completely  got  over  caring  ?" 

To  this  he  made  no  direct  reply;  he  sat  brood 
ing  a  while.  "She  's  a  fearful  fraud!"  he  presently 
exclaimed. 

"She  's  certainly  not  a  mere  child  of  nature.  But 
she  had  elements  of  interest." 

"  She  did  n't  at  all  come  up  to  my  original  idea 
of  her,"  Roderick  pursued. 

"In  what  manner  then  did  she  fall  away  from  it  ?" 

"Oh,  don't  ask  me  or  remind  me!"  Roderick 
cried.  "  What 's  the  use  of  going  into  it  now  ?  It 
was  only  three  months  ago,  but  it  seems  like  ten 

480 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

years."  His  friend  said  nothing  more,  and  after  a 
while  he  went  on  of  his  own  accord.  "  I  believed  there 
was  a  future  in  it  all!  She  gave  me  pleasure  —  extraor 
dinary  pleasure;  and  when  an  artist,  such  a  one  as  I 
was,  receives  extraordinary  pleasure,  you  know — !" 
And  he  paused  again.  "You  never  saw  her  as  I  did, 
you  never  heard  her  in  her  great  moments.  But 
there  's  no  help  in  talking  about  that!  At  first  she 
would  n't  regard  me  seriously;  she  only  chaffed  me  and 
made  light  of  me  and  kept  me  off.  Then  at  last  I 
forced  her  to  admit  I  was  a  great  man.  She  told  me 
she  believed  that,  and  it  gave  me  more  extraordinary 
pleasure  than  anything  else.  A  great  man  was  what 
she  was  looking  for,  and  we  agreed  to  find  our  happi 
ness  for  life  in  each  other.  To  please  me  she  pro 
mised  not  to  marry  till  I  should  say  I  was  prepared 
—  so  far  as  I  could  be  prepared  —  to  see  her.  I  was 
of  course  not  in  a  marrying  way  myself,  but  it  was 
a  stiff  dose  —  which  I  kept  begging  off  from  —  to 
have  to  think  of  another  man's  possessing  her.  To 
spare  my  sensibilities  she  promised  to  turn  off  her 
Prince,  and  the  idea  of  her  doing  so  made  me  as 
happy  as  to  see  some  blest  idea  shaping  itself  in 
the  block.  You  've  seen  how  she  kept  her  promise. 
When  I  learned  it,  it  was  as  if  my  block  had  sud 
denly  split  and  turned  rotten.  She  died  for  me,  like 
that!"  And  he  snapped  his  fingers.  "Was  it  wounded 
vanity,  disappointed  desire,  betrayed  confidence  ? 
I  'm  sure  I  don't  know.  I  make  the  beastly  mistakes, 
and  you  find  the  proper  names  for  them." 

Rowland,  after  an  instant,  could  but  temporise. 
"The  poor  girl  did  the  best  she  could." 

481 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"That  that  was  her  best  then  was  exactly  the  grand 
sell!  I  've  hardly  thought  of  her  these  two  months, 
but  you  see,  and  I  'm  in  fact  myself  surprised  to  find, 
how  little  I  Ve  forgiven  her." 

"Well,  you  may  probably  take  it  that  you  're 
avenged.  I  can't  think  of  her  as  very  happy." 

"Ah,  I  can't  pity  her!"  said  Roderick.  After  which 
he  relapsed  into  silence,  and  the  two  sat  watching  the 
colossal  figure  as  it  made  its  way  downward  along  the 
jagged  silhouette  of  the  rocks.  "Who  's  this  mighty 
man,"  he  finally  demanded,  "  and  what 's  he  coming 
down  on  us  for  ?  We  're  small  people  here,  and  we 
can't  keep  company  with  giants." 

"Wait  till  we  meet  him  on  our  own  level,"  said 
Rowland,  "and  perhaps  he  '11  not  overtop  us." 

"He's  like  me,"  Roderick  rejoined;  "he'll  have 
passed  for  ten  minutes  for  bigger  than  he  is."  At  this 
moment  the  figure  sank  beneath  the  horizon  and 
became  invisible  in  the  uncertain  light.  Suddenly 
he  went  on:  "I  should  like  to  see  her  once  more  — 
simply  to  look  at  her." 

"I  wouldn't  advise  it,"  his  companion  observed. 

"It  was  the  wonderful  nature  of  her  beauty  that 
did  it!"  Roderick  kept  on.  "It  was  all  her  beauty  — 
so  fitful,  so  alive,  so  subject  to  life,  yet  so  always  there 
and  so  interesting  and  so  splendid.  In  comparison 
the  rest  was  nothing.  What  befooled  me  was  to  think 
of  it  as  my  own  property  and  possession  —  somehow 
bought  and  paid  for.  I  had  mastered  it  and  made  it 
mine;  no  one  else  had  studied  it  as  I  had,  no  one  else 
so  understood  it.  What  does  that  stick  of  a  Casamas- 
sima  know  about  it  at  this  hour  ?  There  were  things  I 

482 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

could  say  of  her,  things  I  could  say  to  her  —  because 
I  know,  or  at  least  did  know  —  that  made  her  more 
beautiful,  put  her  into  possession  of  more  of  her  value. 
Therefore  I  should  like  to  see  it  just  once  more;  it 's 
the  only  thing  in  the  world  of  which  I  can  say  so." 

"I  would  n't  advise  it,"  Rowland  felt  himself  too 
meagrely  repeat. 

"That's  right,  my  dear  fellow,"  his  friend  re 
turned.  "Don't  advise!  That 's  no  use  now." 

The  dusk  meanwhile  had  thickened,  and  they  had 
not  perceived  a  figure  approaching  them  across  the 
open  space  in  front  of  the  house.  Suddenly  it  stepped 
into  the  circle  of  light  projected  from  the  door  and 
windows  and  they  beheld  little  Sam  Singleton  stop 
ping  to  stare  at  them.  He  was  the  giant  they  had  seen 
so  strikingly  presented.  When  this  was  made  appar 
ent  Roderick  was  seized  with  high  amusement;  it  was 
the  first  time  he  had  laughed  for  ever  so  many  weeks. 
Singleton,  who  carried  a  knapsack  and  walking-staff, 
received  from  Rowland  the  friendliest  welcome.  He 
was  still  the  same  almost  irritating  little  image  of 
happy  diligence,  and  if  in  the  way  of  luggage  his 
knapsack  contained  nothing  but  a  comb  and  a  second 
shirt,  he  extracted  from  it  a  dozen  admirable  sketches. 
He  had  been  trudging  over  half  Switzerland  and 
making  everywhere  the  most  vivid  pictorial  notes. 
They  were  mostly  in  a  box  at  Interlaken,  and  in  grati 
tude  for  Rowland's  appreciation  he  presently  tele 
graphed  for  his  box,  which,  according  to  the  excellent 
Swiss  method,  was  punctually  delivered  by  post.  The 
nights  were  cold,  and  our  friends,  with  three  or  four 
other  chance  sojourners,  sat  indoors,  over  a  fire  of 

483 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

great  logs.  Even  with  Roderick  hovering  moodily 
apart  they  made  a  sympathetic  little  circle,  and  they 
turned  over  Singleton's  drawings  while  he  perched  in 
the  chimney-corner,  blushing  and  explaining,  with  his 
feet  on  the  rounds  of  his  chair.  He  had  been  pedes- 
trianising  for  six  weeks,  and  he  was  glad  to  rest  a  while 
at  Engelthal.  It  was  no  empty  interval,  however,  for 
he  sallied  forth  every  morning,  his  utensils  on  his  back, 
in  search  of  material  for  new  studies.  Roderick's 
ironic  sense  of  him,  after  the  first  evening,  had  spent 
itself,  and  he  might  have  been  listening,  as  under  a 
sombre  spell,  to  the  hum  of  some  prosperous  work 
shop  from  which  he  had  been  discharged  for  in 
competence.  Singleton,  who  was  not  in  the  secret  of 
his  personal  misfortunes,  still  treated  him,  with  ro 
mantic  reverence,  as  the  rising  star  of  American  art. 
Roderick  had  said  to  Rowland  at  first  that  their  friend 
reminded  him  of  some  curious  insect  with  a  remark 
able  mechanical  instinct  in  its  antennae;  but  as  the 
days  went  by  it  was  apparent  that  the  modest  land- 
scapist's  successful  method  grew  to  have  an  oppressive 
meaning  for  him.  It  pointed  a  moral,  and  Roderick 
used  to  sit  and  con  the  moral  as  he  saw  it  figured  in 
the  little  painter's  bent  back,  on  the  hot  hillsides, 
protruding  from  beneath  a  white  umbrella.  One  day 
he  wandered  up  a  long  slope  and  overtook  him  as  he 
sat  at  work;  Singleton  related  the  incident  after 
wards  to  Rowland,  who,  since  giving  him  in  Rome 
a  hint  of  the  other's  aberrations,  had  strictly  kept  his 
own  counsel. 

"Are  you  always  just  like  this?"   Roderick  had 
asked  in  almost  sepulchral  accents. 

484 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Like  this?"  Singleton,  startled,  had  repeated 
with  a  guilty  blink. 

"You  remind  me  of  a  watch  that  never  runs  down. 
If  one  listens  hard  one  hears  you  always  at  it.  Tic- 
tic-tic,  tic-tic-tic." 

"Oh,  I  see,"  Singleton  had  returned  while  he 
beamed  ingenuously.  "I  'm  very  regular." 

"You  're  very  regular,  yes.  And  I  suppose  you  find 
it  very  pleasant  to  be  very  regular?" 

Singleton  had  hereupon  turned  and  smiled  more 
brightly,  sucking  the  water  from  his  camel's-hair 
brush.  Then  with  a  quickened  sense  of  his  indebted 
ness  to  a  Providence  that  had  endowed  him  with 
intrinsic  facilities:  "Oh,  most  delightful!"  he  had 
exclaimed. 

Roderick  had  stood  looking  at  him  a  moment. 
"Damnation!"  was  the  single  word  that  then  had 
fallen  from  him;  with  which  he  had  turned  his  back. 

Later  in  the  week  our  two  friends  took  together  one 
of  their  longest  rambles.  They  had  walked  before  in 
a  dozen  different  directions,  but  had  not  yet  crossed 
a  charming  little  wooded  pass  which  shut  in  their 
valley  on  one  side  and  descended  into  the  vale  of 
Engelberg.  In  coming  from  Lucerne  they  had  ap 
proached  their  inn  by  this  path,  and  then,  feeling 
that  they  knew  it,  had  neglected  it  for  more  untrodden 
ways.  But  at  last  the  list  of  these  was  exhausted,  and 
Rowland  proposed  the  walk  to  Engelberg  as  a  novelty. 
The  place  is  half  bleak  and  half  pastoral;  a  huge 
white  monastery  rises  abruptly  from  the  green  floor  of 
the  valley  and  contributes  to  the  somewhat  spare  con 
cert  of  blue-green  and  blue-grey  the  diversion  of  a 

485 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

sharp  discord.  Hard  by  is  a  group  of  chalets  and  inns, 
with  the  usual  appurtenances  of  a  prosperous  Swiss 
resort  —  lean  brown  guides  in  baggy  homespun  loaf 
ing  under  carved  wooden  galleries,  stacks  of  alpen 
stocks  in  every  doorway,  sun-scorched  Englishmen 
without  shirt-collars.  The  companions  sat  a  while  at 
the  door  of  an  inn  and  discussed  a  pint  of  wine,  and 
then  Roderick,  whose  light,  elegant  legs  never  gave 
way,  whatever  else  in  him  did,  announced  his  intention 
of  climbing  to  a  certain  rocky  pinnacle  which  overhung 
the  valley  and,  according  to  the  testimony  of  one  of 
the  guides,  commanded  a  view  of  the  Lake  of  Lucerne. 
To  go  and  come  back  was  only  a  matter  of  an  hour, 
but  Rowland,  with  the  prospect  of  his  homeward 
march  before  him,  confessed  to  a  preference  for  loung 
ing  on  his  bench  or,  at  most,  strolling  a  trifle  further 
and  paying  a  visit  to  the  monastery.  Roderick  went 
off  alone,  and  the  elder  man  took  after  a  little  the 
direction  of  the  monasterial  church.  It  was  remark 
able,  like  most  of  the  churches  of  Catholic  Switzer 
land,  for  a  coarse  floridity,  but  one  was  free  to  view 
this,  if  one  would,  as  brave  romantic  character. 
Rowland  lingered  a  quarter  of  an  hour  under  the 
influence  of  that  suggestion.  While  he  was  near  the 
high  altar  another  visitor  or  two  appeared  to  have 
come  in  at  the  west  door,  but  he  gave  no  heed  and  was 
presently  engaged  in  deciphering  a  curious  old  Ger 
man  epitaph  on  one  of  the  mural  tablets.  At  last  he 
turned  away,  wondering  if  its  syntax  or  its  theology 
were  the  more  uncomfortable,  and,  to  his  infinite  sur 
prise,  found  himself  confronted  with  Prince  and 
Princess  Casamassima. 

486 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

The  surprise  on  Christina's  part,  for  an  instant, 
was  equal,  and  its  first  effect  might  have  been  to 
make  her  seek,  for  the  time,  the  refuge  of  assumed 
unconsciousness.  The  Prince,  however,  saluted 
gravely,  and  then  Christina,  in  silence,  put  out  her 
hand.  Rowland  immediately  asked  if  they  were  stay 
ing  at  Engelberg,  but  Christina  only  looked  at  him 
hard,  and  still  without  speaking.  The  Prince  answered 
his  questions  and  related  that  they  had  been  making 
a  month's  tour  in  Switzerland,  that  at  Lucerne  his 
wife  had  been  somewhat  obstinately  indisposed,  and 
that  the  physician  had  recommended  a  week's  trial 
of  the  tonic  air  and  goat's  milk  of  Engelberg.  The 
scenery,  said  the  Prince,  was  stupendous,  but  the  life 
was  terribly  sad  —  and  they  had  three  days  more! 
It  was  a  blessing,  he  urbanely  added,  to  see  a  good 
Roman  face. 

Christina's  odd  attitude,  her  voluntary  silence  and 
her  inscrutable  gaze,  seemed  to  Rowland  at  first  to 
promise,  a  little  alarmingly,  or  even  boringly,  some 
new  "line";  but  he  then  perceived  that  she  was  really 
moved  by  the  sight  of  him  and  was  afraid  of  betraying 
herself.  "Do  let  us  leave  this  Swiss  hideousness," 
she  said;  "the  whole  place  seems  horribly  to  'jodel' 
at  us!"  They  passed  slowly  to  the  door,  and  when 
they  stood  outside,  in  the  sunny  coolness  of  the  valley, 
she  turned  more  frankly  to  her  old  acquaintance. 
"  It  is  a  blessing,  you  know  —  such  a  meeting.  I  'm 
too  delighted  to  see  you."  She  glanced  about  her  and 
observed  against  the  wall  of  the  church  a  large  stone 
seat.  She  looked  at  her  companion  a  moment,  and  he 
smiled  more  intensely,  Rowland  thought,  than  the 

487 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

occasion  demanded.   "I  should  like  to  sit  here  a  little 
and  speak  to  this  good  friend  —  alone." 

"At  your  pleasure,  cara  mla"  said  the  Prince. 

The  tone  of  each  was  measured,  to  Rowland's  ear; 
but  that  of  Christina  was  not  imperceptibly  dry  and 
that  of  her  husband  irreproachably  urbane.  Rowland 
remembered  how  the  Cavaliere  had  told  him  that 
Mrs.  Light's  candidate  had,  in  his  way,  the  inner  as 
well  as  the  outer  marks  of  the  grand  seigneur,  and  our 
friend  wondered  how  he  relished  a  certain  curtness. 
He  was,  comparatively  speaking,  an  Italian  of  the 
undemonstrative  type,  but  Rowland  nevertheless 
divined  that,  like  other  potentates,  great  and  small, 
before  him,  he  had  had  to  look  concessions  in  the 
face.  "Shall  I  come  back  ?"  he  imperturbably  asked. 

"In  half  an  hour,"  said  Christina. 

In  the  clear  outer  light  Rowland's  first  impres 
sion  of  her  was  that  her  beauty  had  received  some 
strange  accession,  affecting  him  after  the  manner 
of  a  musical  composition  better  "given,"  to  his  sense, 
than  ever  before.  And  yet  in  three  months  she  could 
hardly  have  changed;  the  change  was  in  Rowland's 
own  vision  of  her,  in  which  that  last  interview  on 
the  eve  of  her  marriage  had  sown  the  seeds  of  a  new 
appreciation. 

"How  came  you  to  be  in  this  queer  place?"  she 
asked.  "Are  you  making  a  stay  ?" 

"I  'm  staying  at  Engelthal,  some  ten  miles  away. 
I  walked  over." 

"Then  you  're  alone  ?" 

"I  'm  with  Roderick  Hudson." 

"Is  he  here  with  you  now?" 
488 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"He  went  half  an  hour  ago  to  climb  a  rock  for  a 
view." 

"And  his  mother  and  —  and  the  promessa  — 
where  are  they  ?" 

"They  also  are  at  Engelthal." 

She  had  a  pause.  "What  then  are  you  all  doing 
there?" 

"What  are  you  doing  here?"  Rowland  returned. 

"Counting  the  minutes  till  my  week's  over.  I 
hate  mountains;  they  always  strike  me  as  great 
rough  lumps  and  chunks  of  Nature  —  hopeless  con 
fessions  of  her  stupidity.  I  'm  sure  Miss  Garland 
likes  them." 

"She  's  very  fond  of  them,  I  believe." 

"You  believe  —  don't  you  know?  But  I  think 
I  've  given  up  trying  to  imitate  Miss  Garland,"  said 
Christina. 

"You  surely  need  imitate  no  one." 

"Don't  say  that,"  she  said  gravely.  "So  you've 
walked  ten  miles  this  morning  ?  And  you  're  to 
walk  back  again?" 

"Back  again  to  dinner." 

"And  Mr.  Hudson  too?" 

"Mr.  Hudson  especially.     He's  a  great  walker." 

"You  men  are  happy!"  Christina  cried.  "I  be 
lieve  I  should  enjoy  the  mountains  if  I  could  do  such 
things.  It 's  sitting  still  and  having  them  scowl  down 
at  you.  The  Prince  never  walks.  He  only  goes  on 
a  mule.  He  was  carried  up  the  Faulhorn  in  a  palan 
quin." 

"In  a  palanquin  ?" 

"  In  one  of  those  machines  —  a  chaise-a-porteurs 
489 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

—  like  a  woman."  And  then  when  Rowland  had 
received  this  information  in  silence,  since  it  was 
equally  unbecoming  to  be  either  amused  or  shocked: 
"Is  Mr.  Hudson  to  join  you  again?  Will  he  come 
to  this  spot  ?" 

"I  shall  soon  begin  to  expect  him." 

"What  shall  you  do  when  you  leave  Switzerland  ?" 
she  continued.  "Shall  you  go  back  to  Rome?" 

"I  rather  doubt  it.    My  plans  are  very  uncertain." 

"They  depend  upon  Mr.  Hudson,  eh?" 

"In  a  great  measure." 

"I  want  you  to  tell  me  about  him.  Is  he  still  in 
that  perverse  state  of  mind  that  distressed  you  so 
much?" 

Rowland  looked  at  her  mistrustfully,  making  no 
answer.  He  was  indisposed,  instinctively,  to  tell  her 
Roderick  was  out  of  sorts;  it  was  so  possible  she 
might  offer  to  try  to  bring  him  round.  She  immedi 
ately  perceived  his  hesitation. 

"  I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  n't  be  frank," 
she  said.  "  I  should  think  we  were  excellently  placed 
for  that  sort  of  thing.  You  remembec  that  formerly 
I  cared  very  little  what  I  said,  don't  you  ?  Well,  I 
care  absolutely  not  at  all  now.  I  say  what  I  please, 
I  do  what  I  please!  How  did  Mr.  Hudson  receive 
the  news  of  my  marriage  ?" 

"Very  badly,"  said  Rowland. 

"With  rage  and  reproaches?"  And  as  he  hesi 
tated  again:  "With  silent  contempt?" 

"I  can  tell  you  but  little.  He  spoke  to  me  on  the 
subject,  but  I  stopped  him.  I  told  him  it  was  none 
of  his  business  nor  of  mine." 

49° 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"That  was  an  excellent  answer,"  Christina  ob 
served.  "Yet  it  was  a  little  your  business,  after  those 
sublime  protestations  I  treated  you  to.  I  was  really 
very  fine  that  morning,  eh  ?" 

"You  do  yourself  injustice,"  said  Rowland.  "I 
should  be  at  liberty  now  to  believe  you  were  insin 
cere." 

"What  does  it  matter  now  whether  I  was  insin 
cere  or  not  ?  I  can't  conceive  of  anything  matter 
ing  less.  I  was  very  fine  —  is  n't  it  true  ?" 

"You  know  what  I  think  of  you,"  he  replied. 
And  for  fear  of  being  forced  to  betray  his  suspicion 
of  the  influence  brought  to  bear  upon  her  crisis  he 
took  refuge  in  a  commonplace.  "  I  hope  your  mother 's 
well." 

"My  mother  's  in  the  enjoyment  of  superb  health, 
and  may  be  seen  every  evening  in  the  Casino  at  the 
Baths  of  Lucca  confiding  to  every  new-comer  that 
she  has  married  her  daughter  —  tremendously." 

Rowland  was  anxious  for  news  of  Mrs.  Light's 
companion,  and  the  natural  course  was  frankly  to  in 
quire  about  him.  "And  the  dear  Cavaliere  's  well  ?" 

Christina  hesitated,  but  she  betrayed  no  other 
embarrassment.  "The  dear  Cavaliere  has  retired 
to  his  native  city  of  Ancona,  upon  a  pension,  for  the 
rest  of  his  natural  life.  Poverino!" 

"I've  a  great  regard  for  him,"  said  Rowland 
gravely,  at  the  same  time  that  he  privately  wondered 
if  Poverino's  pension  were  paid  by  Prince  Casamas- 
sima  for  services  rendered  in  connexion  with  his 
marriage.  "And  what  do  you  do,"  he  continued, 
"on  leaving  this  place  ?" 

491 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"We  go  to  Italy  —  we  go  to  Naples:"  She  rose 
and  stood  silent  some  minutes,  looking  down  the 
valley.  The  figure  of  Prince  Casamassima  appeared 
in  the  distance,  balancing  his  white  umbrella.  As 
her  eyes  took  it  in  Rowland  could  feel  he  saw 
something  deeper  in  the  strange  expression  that  had 
lurked  in  her  face  while  he  talked  to  her.  Was  it 
pure  imagination,  or  did  they  grow  harder  with  this 
view,  and  was  the  bitterness  so  suggested  the  out 
ward  mark  of  her  sacrificed  ideal  ?  When  she  pre 
sently  afterwards  turned  them  on  himself  they  showed 
to  Rowland  as  almost  tragic.  There  was  a  new  dread 
in  his  sympathy;  he  wished  to  give  her  a  proof 
of  friendship,  and  yet  it  seemed  to  him  that  she  had 
now  fixed  her  face  in  a  direction  where  friendship 
was  powerless  to  interpose.  She  half  read  his  feel 
ings  apparently,  and  she  had  a  beautiful  sad  smile. 
"I  hope  we  may  never  meet  again!"  she  said.  And 
as  Rowland  appeared  to  protest:  "You  've  seen 
me  at  my  best.  I  wish  to  tell  you  solemnly,  I  was 
sincere.  I  know  the  whole  look  of  it 's  against  me," 
she  went  on  quickly.  "There  's  a  great  deal  I  can't 
tell  you.  Perhaps  you  've  guessed  it;  I  care  very 
little.  You  know  at  any  rate  I  did  my  best.  It  wouldn't 
serve;  I  was  beaten  and  broken;  they  were  stronger 
than  I.  Now  it 's  another  affair!" 

"  It  seems  to  me  you  've  a  large  opportunity  for 
happiness  yet,"  he  vaguely  remarked,  seeming  fool 
ish  even  to  himself. 

"Happiness  ?  I  mean  to  cultivate  delight;  I  mean 
to  go  in  for  passing  my  time.  You  remember  I  told 
you  that  I  was  in  part  the  world's  and  the  devil's. 

492 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Now  they  Ve  taken  me  all.  It  was  their  choice;  may 
they  never  repent!" 

"I  shall  hear  of  you,"  said  Rowland. 

"You  '11  hear  of  me.  And  whatever  you  do  hear, 
remember  this:  I  was  sincere!" 

Prince  Casamassima  had  approached,  and  Row 
land  looked  at  him  with  a  good  deal  of  simple  com 
passion  as  a  part  of  that  "world"  against  which 
Christina  had  launched  her  mysterious  menace.  It 
was  obvious  that  he  was  what  is  called  a  well-meaning 
person,  and  that  he  could  not  in  the  nature  of  things 
be  a  positively  bad  husband;  but  his  distinguished 
inoffensrveness  only  deepened  the  infelicity  of  Chris 
tina's  situation  by  depriving  her  defiant  attitude  of 
the  sanction  of  relative  justice.  So  long  as  she  had 
been  free  to  choose  she  had  esteemed  him;  but  from 
the  moment  she  was  forced  to  marry  him  she  had 
detested  him.  Rowland  read  in  the  young  man's  elas 
tic  Italian  mask  a  profound  consciousness  of  all  this; 
and  as  he  found  there  also  a  record  of  other  curious 
things  —  of  pride,  of  temper,  of  bigotry,  of  an  im 
mense  heritage  of  more  or  less  aggressive  traditions 
—  he  reflected  that  the  matrimonial  conjunction 
of  his  two  companions  might  be  sufficiently  prolific 
in  incident. 

"You're  going  to  Naples?"  he  inquired  byway 
of  conversation. 

"We're  going  to  Paris,"  Christina  interposed 
slowly  and  softly.  "We  're  going  to  London.  We  're 
going  to  Vienna.  We  're  going  to  St.  Petersburg. 
We  may  even  go  to  China." 

The  Prince  dropped  his  eyes  and  fretted  the  earth 
493 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

with  the  point  of  his  umbrella.  While  he  engaged 
Rowland's  attention  Christina  turned  away,  and 
when  our  friend  observed  her  again  a  fresh  impres 
sion  was  reflected  in  her  face.  She  had  noticed 
something  concealed  from  his  own  sight  by  the  angle 
of  the  church  wall.  In  a  moment  Roderick  stepped 
upon  the  scene. 

He  stopped  short,  astonished;  his  face  and  figure 
were  jaded,  his  garments  dusty.  He  looked  at  Chris 
tina  from  head  to  foot,  and  then,  slowly,  his  cheek 
flushed  and  his  eyes  darkened.  Christina  returned 
this  unadorned  recognition,  and  for  some  moments 
there  was  a  singular  silence.  "You  don't  look  well!" 
she  said  at  last. 

Roderick  answered  nothing;  he  only  kept  his 
attention  on  her  as  if  she  had  been  some  striking 
object  in  the  picture.  "  I  don't  see  that  you  're  less 
wonderful,  you  know,"  he  presently  remarked. 

She  turned  away  with  a  smile  and  stood  a  while 
gazing  down  the  valley;  Roderick  then  simply  stared 
at  her  husband.  Christina  put  out  her  hand  to  Row 
land.  "Farewell,"  she  said.  "If  you  're  near  me  in 
future  don't  try  to  see  me."  And  after  a  pause,  in 
a  lower  tone:  "I  was  sincere!"  She  addressed  her 
self  again  to  Roderick  and  asked  him  some  com 
monplace  about  his  walk;  but  his  answer,  barely 
articulate,  was  all  in  his  eyes.  Rowland  at  first  had 
expected  an  outbreak  of  reproach,  but  it  was  evi 
dent  that  the  danger  was  every  moment  diminish 
ing.  He  was  forgetting  everything  but  her  beauty, 
and  as  she  stood  there  and  let  him  feast  upon  it  Row 
land  was  sure  she  acted  with  intention.  "I  won't 

494 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

say  good-bye  to  you''  she  rang  out  clear;  "we 
shall  meet  again!"  And  she  moved  gravely  away. 
The  Prince  took  courteous  leave  of  Rowland;  upon 
Roderick  he  bestowed  a  bow  of  exaggerated  civility. 
The  latter  appeared  not  to  notice;  he  was  watch 
ing  Christina  as  she  passed  over  the  grass.  His  eyes 
followed  her  until  she  reached  the  door  of  her  inn. 
Here  she  stopped  and  looked  back  at  him. 


XXV 

ON  the  homeward  walk  that  evening  he  preserved 
an  ominous  silence,  and  early  on  the  morrow,  say 
ing  nothing  of  his  intentions,  he  started  off  alone: 
Rowland  saw  him  measure  with  light  elastic  steps 
the  rugged  path  to  Engelberg.  He  was  absent  all 
day  and  gave  no  account  of  himself  on  his  return, 
simply  saying  he  was  impossibly  tired  and  going  to 
bed  early.  When  he  had  left  the  room  Mary  Gar 
land  drew  near  to  their  friend. 

"I  wish  to  ask  you  a  question,"  she  said.  "  What 
happened  to  Roderick  yesterday  at  Engelberg  ?  " 

"  You  've  discovered  that  something  did  happen  ?  " 

"  I  'm  sure  of  it.    Was  it  anything  disagreeable  ?  " 

"I  don't  know  how  at  the  present  moment  he 
judges  it.  He  met  Princess  Casamassima." 

"Thank  you!"   said  Mary;   and  she  turned  away. 

The  conversation  had  been  brief,  but  it  had  not 
been  the  first  exchange  of  words  important  far  be 
yond  its  duration.  Mary's  question  had  at  any  rate 
for  Rowland  a  great  and  particular  sign  —  being 
the  first  she  had  ever  asked  him  which  Roderick 
himself  could  have  answered  better.  Therefore  she 
had  betrayed  as  not  before  how  little  she  "got  out  " 
of  the  latter.  Rowland  ventured  to  think  this  fact 
marked  an  era. 

The  next  morning  was  sultry,  ard  the  air,  usually 
so  fresh  at  those  altitudes,  was  oppressively  heavy. 

496 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  lounged  on  the  grass  a  while,  near  Sin 
gleton,  who  was  at  work  under  his  white  umbrella 
within  view  of  the  house;  and  then  in  quest  of  cool 
ness  he  wandered  away  to  the  rocky  ridge  whence 
the  view  was  across  to  the  Jungfrau.  To-day,  how 
ever,  the  white  summits  were  invisible;  their  heads 
were  muffled  in  sullen  clouds  and  the  valleys  be 
neath  them  curtained  in  dun-coloured  mist.  Row 
land  had  a  book  in  his  pocket,  which  he  took  out 
and  opened.  But  his  page  remained  unturned;  his 
own  thoughts  were  more  absorbing.  His  interview 
with  Christina  had  left  him  all  vibrating,  and  he  was 
haunted  with  the  memory  of  her  almost  blameless 
bitterness  and  of  something  sinister  in  this  fresh 
physiognomy  she  had  chosen  to  present.  These 
things  were  immensely  appealing,  and  he  thought 
with  richly  renewed  impatience  of  Roderick's  having 
again  become  acquainted  with  them.  It  required 
little  ingenuity  to  make  it  probable  that  certain 
visible  marks  in  him  had  also  appealed  to  Chris 
tina.  His  consummate  indifference,  his  supreme 
defiance,  would  make  him  a  magnificent  trophy, 
and  she  had  announced  with  sufficient  distinctness 
that  she  had  said  good-bye  to  scruples.  It  was  her 
fancy  at  present  to  treat  the  world  as  a  garden  of 
pleasure,  and  if  hitherto  she  had  played  with  Rod 
erick's  passion  on  its  stem  there  was  little  doubt 
that  she  would  now  pluck  it  with  a  more  merciless 
hand  and  drain  it  of  its  acrid  sweetness.  And  why 
in  the  name  of  common  consistency  —  though  indeed 
it  was  the  only  consistency  to  have  looked  for  — 
need  Roderick  have  gone  marching  back  to  destruc- 

497 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

tion  ?  Rowland's  meditations,  even  when  they  began 
in  rancour,  often  brought  him  comfort;  but  on  this 
occasion  they  hurt  him  as  if  they  had  been  sharp- 
cornered  objects  bumped  against  in  darkness.  He 
recognised  a  sudden  collapse  of  his  moral  energy; 
a  current  that  had  been  flowing  for  two  years  with 
a  breadth  of  its  own  seemed  at  last  to  submit  to 
shrinkage  and  thinness.  He  looked  away  at  the  sal 
low  vapours  on  the  mountains;  their  dreariness 
had  an  analogy  with  the  stale  residuum  of  his  own 
generosity.  At  last  he  had  arrived  at  the  very  limit 
of  the  deference  a  sane  man  might  pay  to  other 
people's  folly;  nay,  rather,  he  had  transgressed  it, 
he  had  been  befooled  on  a  gigantic  scale.  He  turned 
to  his  book  and  tried  to  woo  back  patience,  but  it 
gave  him  cold  comfort  and  he  tossed  it  angrily  away. 
He  pulled  his  hat  over  his  eyes  and  tried  to  wonder 
dispassionately  if  atmospheric  conditions  might  n't 
have  to  do  with  his  gloom.  He  remained  some  time 
in  this  attitude,  but  was  finally  roused  from  it  by 
an  odd  sense  that  although  he  had  heard  nothing 
some  one  had  approached  him.  He  looked  up  and 
saw  Roderick  standing  before  him  on  the  turf.  His 
mood  made  the  spectacle  unwelcome,  and  for  a  mo 
ment  he  felt  himself  ungraciously  glare.  Roderick's 
face,  on  the  other  hand,  took  up,  even  before  he 
spoke,  something  that  evidently  figured  to  him  as 
their  old  relation.  It  was  if  he  had  come  back  to  him 
—  and  that,  after  a  moment,  made  our  friend  sit  up. 
"I  should  like  you  to  do  me  a  favour,"  the  young 
man  presently  said.  "I  should  like  you  to  lend  me 
some  money." 

498 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"How  much  do  you  wish  ?"  Rowland  asked. 

"Well,  say  a  thousand  francs." 

Rowland  considered.  "I  don't  wish  to  be  indis 
creet,  but  may  I  ask  you  what  you  propose  to  do 
with  a  thousand  francs  ?" 

"To  go  to  Interlaken." 

"And  why  should  you  go  to  Interlaken?" 

The  answer  came  at  once.  "Because  that  wo 
man  's  to  be  there." 

Rowland  broke  into  laughter,  but  his  friend  re 
mained  serenely  grave.  "  You  Ve  forgiven  her  then  ?" 
said  Rowland. 

Roderick,  before  answering,  dropped  upon  the 
grass.  But  then,  beside  his  companion,  he  spoke 
with  emphasis.  "Not  a  bit!" 

"I  don't  understand." 

"Neither  do  I.  I  only  know  that  her  beauty  has 
the  same  extraordinary  value  as  ever  and  that  it 
has  waked  me  up  amazingly.  Besides,  she  has  asked 
me  to  come." 

"She  has  asked  you?" 

"Yesterday,  in  so  many  words." 

"Ah,  the  cruel  creature!"  cried  Rowland,  who 
was  thinking  of  Mary  Garland. 

"Well,"  said  Roderick,  "I  'm  perfectly  willing  to 
take  her  for  that." 

"  But  why  need  you  take  her  for  anything  ?  Why,  in 
the  name  of  common  sense,  did  you  go  back  to  her  ?" 

"Why  did  I  find  her  standing  there  like  a  goddess 
who  had  just  stepped  out  of  her  cloud  ?  Why  did 
I  look  at  her  at  all  ?  Before  I  knew  where  I  was  the 
spell  was  cast." 

499 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland,  who  had  been  sitting  erect,  threw  him 
self  back  on  the  grass  and  lay  for  some  time  staring 
up  at  the  sky.  At  last,  raising  himself  again,  "Are 
you  perfectly  serious  ?"  he  demanded. 

"Deadly  serious." 

"Your  idea  's  to  remain  at  Interlaken  some  time  ?" 

"Indefinitely!"  said  Roderick;  and  it  seemed  to 
his  companion  that  the  tone  in  which  he  spoke  this 
made  it  immensely  well  worth  hearing. 

"And  your  mother  and  cousin  meanwhile  are  to 
remain  here  ?  It  will  soon  be  getting  very  cold,  you 
know." 

"  It  does  n't  seem  much  like  it  to-day." 

"Very  true;   but  to-day  's  a  day  by  itself." 

"There  's  nothing  to  prevent  their  going  back  to 
Lucerne.  I  quite  depend  upon  your  taking  charge 
of  them." 

At  this  Rowland  threw  himself  at  his  length  again, 
and  then  again,  after  reflexion,  faced  his  interlocu 
tor.  "How  would  you  express,"  he  asked,  "the 
nature  of  the  profit  that  you  expect  to  derive  from 
your  excursion  ?" 

"I  see  no  need  of  expressing  it.  I  shall  express 
it  by  going.  The  case  is  simply  that  that  appeals 
to  me  as  an  interest,  and  I  find  myself  so  delighted  to 
recognise  an  interest  that  I  have  n't  it  in  my  heart 
to  dash  it  away.  As  I  say,  she  has  waked  me  up, 
and  it 's  possible  that  something  may  come  of  that. 
She  makes  me  live  again  —  though  I  admit  there  's 
a  strange  pain  in  the  act  of  coming  to  life.  But  at 
least  it 's  movement,  and  what  else,  or  who  else,  for 
so  many  weeks,  has  moved  me  ?" 

500 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Of  this  again  Rowland  considered.  "You  really 
feel  then  on  the  way —  ?" 

"  Don't  ask  too  much.  I  only  know  that  she  makes 
my  heart  beat,  makes  'me  see  visions." 

"You  feel  at  least  encouraged  ?" 

"I  feel  excited." 

"You  're  really  looking  better,"  Rowland  went  on 
after  a  moment. 

"I  'm  glad  to  hear  it.  Now  that  I  've  answered 
your  questions,  therefore,  please  give  me  the  money." 

Rowland  shook  his  head.  "For  that  dire  purpose 
I  can't!" 

"You  can't?" 

"It's  impossible.  Your  idea's  too  great  a  folly. 
I  can't  help  you  to  it." 

Roderick  flushed  a  little,  and  his  eyes  lighted. 
"I  '11  borrow  what  money  I  can  then  from  Mary!" 
This  was  not  viciously  said;  it  had  simply  the  ring 
of  passionate  resolution. 

Instantly  it  brought  Rowland  to  terms.  He  took 
a  bunch  of  keys  from  his  pocket  and  tossed  it  upon 
the  grass.  "The  little  brass  one  opens  my  dressing- 
case.  You  '11  find  money  in  it." 

Roderick  let  the  keys  lie;  something  seemed  to 
have  struck  him;  he  looked  askance  at  his  friend. 
"You  're  awfully  considerate  of  Mary!" 

"You  certainly  are  not.  Your  proposal 's  an  out 
rage." 

"  Very  likely.    It 's  proof  the  more  of  my  desire." 

"If  you've  so  much  steam  on,  then,  use  it  for 
something  else!  You  say  you 're  awake  again.  I'm 
delighted  to  believe  it;  only  be  so  in  the  best  sense. 

501 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Is  n't  it  very  plain  ?  If  you  've  the  energy  to  desire 
you  've  also  the  energy  to  reason  and  to  judge.  If  you 
can  care  to  go  you  can  also  care  to  stay,  and,  staying 
being  the  more  profitable  course,  the  inspiration,  on 
that  side,  for  a  man  who  has  his  self-confidence  to 
win  back  again,  should  be  greater." 

Roderick  plainly  failed  to  relish  this  lesson,  and  his 
face  darkened  as  he  listened  to  its  echo.  "  I  think, 
my  dear  man,  you  're  making  a  mistake." 

Well,  Rowland  would  at  least  drive  his  mistake 
home.  "Do  you  believe  that  hanging  about  the 
Princess,  on  such  terms,  will  do  you  any  good  ?  Do 
you  believe  it  won't  ?  In  either  case  you  should  keep 
away  from  her.  If  it  won't,  it 's  your  duty;  and  if  it 
will,  you  can  get  on  without  it." 

"Do  me  good  ?"  cried  Roderick.  "What  do  I  want 
of  'good'  —  what  should  I  do  with  'good'  ?  I  want 
what  she  gives  me,  call  it  by  what  name  you  will.  I 
want  to  ask  no  questions,  but  to  take  what  comes  and 
let  it  fill  the  impossible  hours!  But  I  did  n't  come  to 
you  to  discuss  the  matter." 

"  I  've  not  the  least  desire  to  discuss  it,"  said  Row 
land.  "I  simply  protest." 

Roderick  meditated  a  moment.  "  I  've  never  yet 
thought  twice  about  accepting  any  favour  of  you,  but 
this  one  sticks  in  my  throat." 

"  It 's  not  a  favour.  I  lend  you  the  money  only 
under  compulsion." 

"Well,  then,  I  '11  take  it  only  under  compulsion!" 
And,  springing  to  his  feet,  Roderick  marched  away. 

His  words  were  ambiguous;  Rowland  lay  on  the 
grass  wondering  what  they  meant.  Half  an  hour  had 

502 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

not  elapsed  before  he  reappeared,  heated  with  rapid 
walking  and  wiping  his  forehead.  He  flung  himself 
down,  and  the  difference  between  his  perversity  and 
his  sincerity  was  somehow  vivid  in  his  eyes. 

"I  Ve  done  my  best!"  he  said.  "My  mother  's  out 
of  money;  she  's  expecting  next  week  some  circular 
notes  from  London.  She  had  only  ten  francs  in  her 
pocket.  Mary  Garland  gave  me  every  sou  she  pos 
sessed  in  the  world.  It  makes  exactly  thirty-four 
francs.  That 's  not  enough." 

"You  asked  Mary  Garland  ?"  Rowland  cried. 

"Yes,  I  asked  her." 

"And  told  her  your  purpose  ?" 

"  I  named  no  names.    But  she  knew." 

"  What  then  did  she  say  ?  " 

"Not  a  syllable.    She  simply  emptied  her  purse." 

Rowland  turned  over  and  buried  his  face  in  his 
arms.  He  felt  a  movement  of  irrepressible  elation  and 
barely  stifled  a  cry  of  joy.  Now,  surely,  Roderick  had 
shattered  the  last  link  in  the  chain  that  bound  Mary 
to  him,  and  after  this  she  would  be  free  — !  When  he 
recovered  his  posture  Roderick  was  still  sitting  there 
and  had  not  touched  the  keys  that  lay  on  the  grass. 

"  I  don't  know  what 's  the  matter  with  me,"  said 
this  young  man,  "but  I  Ve  an  insurmountable  aver 
sion  to  taking  your  money." 

"The  matter,  I  suppose,  is  that  you  've  a  grain  of 
reason  left." 

"No,  it 's  not  that.  It 's  a  kind  of  brute  instinct.  I 
find  it  extremely  provoking!"  He  sat  there  for  some 
time  with  his  head  in  his  hands  and  his  eyes  on  the 
ground.  His  expression  had  turned  hard  —  his  diffi- 

5°3 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

culty  was  clearly  greater  than  he  had  expected. 
"You've  succeeded  in  making  this  thing  uncom 
monly  unpleasant!"  he  at  last  exclaimed. 

"I  'm  sorry,"  said  Rowland,  "but  I  can't  see  it  in 
any  other  way." 

"That  I  believe,  but  what  I  resent  is  that  the  range 
of  your  vision  should  pretend  to  be  the  limit  of  my 
action.  You  can't  feel  for  me  nor  judge  for  me,  and 
there  are  certain  things  you  know  nothing  about.  I 
have  suffered,  sir!"  Roderick  went  on  with  increasing 
emphasis  and  with  the  reawakened  ring  of  his  fine  old 
Virginian  pomposity.  "I  've  suffered  damnable  tor 
ments.  Have  I  been  such  a  placid,  contented,  com 
fortable  creature  these  last  six  months  that  when  I 
find  a  chance  to  forget  my  misery  I  should  take  such 
pains  not  to  profit  by  it  ?  You  ask  too  much,  it  seems 
to  me  —  for  a  man  who  himself  has  no  occasion  to 
play  the  hero.  I  don't  say  that  invidiously;  it 's  your 
disposition,  and  you  can't  help  it.  But  decidedly 
there  are  certain  things  you  know  nothing  about." 

Rowland  listened  to  this  outbreak  with  open  eyes, 
and  Roderick,  if  he  had  been  less  intent  upon  his  own 
unhappy  cause,  would  probably  have  perceived  that 
he  turned  pale.  "These  things  —  what  are  they?" 
Rowland  asked. 

"Why,  they're  women,  principally,  and  what 
relates  to  women.  Women  for  you,  by  what  I  can 
make  out,  scarce  have  an  existence.  You  Ve  no 
imagination  of  them,  no  sense  of  them,  nothing  in 
you  to  be  touched  by  them." 

"  That 's  a  funny  charge,"  said  Rowland  gravely. 

"I  don't  make  it  without  evidence." 
5°4 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Then  with  what  evidence  ?" 

Roderick  hesitated.  "The  way  you  treated  Chris 
tina  Light.  I  call  that  grossly  obtuse." 

"Obtuse?"  Rowland  repeated,  frowning. 

"Thick-skinned,  beneath  your  good  fortune." 

"My  good  fortune?" 

"There  it  is  —  it's  all  news  to  you!  You  had 
pleased  her,  interested  her.  I  don't  say  she  was  dying 
of  love  for  you,  but  she  liked  you  so  much  that  she 
would  have  been  glad  if  you  could  have  become  a 
little  aware  of  it." 

"We  '11  let  this  pass!"  Rowland  said  after  a  silence. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  insist.  I  've  only  her  own  word  for 
it." 

"Her  own  word  ?" 

"You've  noticed,  at  least,  I  suppose,  that  she's 
not  in  general  afraid  to  speak.  I  never  repeated  it, 
not  because  I  was  jealous,  but  because  I  was  curious 
to  see  how  long  your  ignorance  would  last  if  left  to 
itself." 

"I  frankly  confess  it  would  have  lasted  for  ever. 
And  yet  I  don't  at  all  hold  my  insensibility  proved." 

"Oh,  don't  say  that,"  cried  Roderick,  "or  I  shall 
begin  to  suspect  —  what  I  must  do  you  the  justice  to 
say  I  never  have  suspected  —  that  you  take  yourself 
even  more  seriously  than  we,  your  good  friends,  take 
you.  Upon  my  word,  when  I  think  of  all  this,  your 
protest,  as  you  call  it,  against  the  vivacity  of  my 
attention  to  that  young  lady  strikes  me  as  having  its 
absurd  side.  There  's  something  monstrous  in  a  man's 
pretending  to  lay  down  the  law  to  a  state  of  sensibility 
with  which  he  's  unacquainted  —  in  his  expecting  of 

505 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

a  fellow  a  kind  of  sacrifice  that  it  has  been  so  easy  for 
him  not  to  have  the  occasion  to  make,  and  of  which 
he  does  n't  understand  the  very  terms." 

"Oh,  oh!"  cried  Rowland. 

"It's  very  easy  to  exclaim,"  Roderick  went  on; 
"but  you  must  remember  that  there  are  such  things 
as  nerves  and  needs  and  senses  and  desires  and  a  rest 
less  demon  within,  a  demon  that  may  sleep  sometimes 
for  a  day,  or  for  six  months,  but  that  sooner  or  later 
starts  up  and  thumps  at  your  ribs  till  you  listen  to  him. 
If  you  can't  conceive  it,  take  it  on  trust  and  let  a  poor 
visionary  devil  live  his  life  as  he  can!" 

These  words  affected  his  sad  auditor  as  something 
heard  in  a  dream;  it  was  impossible  they  had  been 
actually  spoken  —  so  supreme  an  expression  were 
they  of  the  high  insolence  of  egotism.  Reality  was 
somehow  never  so  consistent  and  complete.  But 
Roderick  sat  there  balancing  his  beautiful  head,  and 
the  echoes  of  his  ugly  mistake  still  lingered  along  the 
half-muffled  mountain-side.  Rowland  suddenly  felt 
the  cup  of  his  own  ordeal  full  to  overflowing,  and  his 
long-gathered  bitterness  surged  into  the  simple  clear 
passion  of  pain  at  wasted  kindness.  But  he  spoke 
without  violence,  and  Roderick  was  probably  at  first 
far  from  measuring  the  depths  beneath  his  tone. 

"You  're  incredibly  ungrateful,  I  think,  and  you  're 
talking  arrogant  nonsense.  What  do  you  know  about 
my  needs  and  senses  and  my  imagination  ?  How  do 
you  know  whether  I  've  loved  or  suffered  ?  If  I  've 
held  my  tongue  and  not  troubled  you  with  my  com 
plaints,  you  find  it  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world 
to  put  a  belittling  construction  on  my  silence!  I  've 

506 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

loved  quite  as  well  as  you;  indeed  I  think  I  may  say 
rather  better,  since  I  Ve  been  constant.  I  Ve  been 
willing  to  give  more  than  I  received.  I  Ve  not  for 
saken  one  mistress  because  I  thought  another  more 
beautiful,  nor  given  up  the  other  and  believed  all 
manner  of  evil  about  her  because  I  had  n't  my  way 
with  her.  I  've  been  a  good  friend  to  Christina  Light, 
and  it  seems  to  me  my  friendship  does  her  quite  as 
much  honour  as  your  love!" 

"  Your  love  —  your  suffering  —  your  silence  — 
your  friendship!"  cried  Roderick.  "I  declare  I  don't 
understand!" 

"I  dare  say  not.  You  're  not  used  to  having  to,  in 
the  least,  where  I  'm  concerned;  you  're  not  used  to 
hearing  me  talk  of  my  feelings  or  even  to  remembering 
that  such  things  are  possible,  such  luxuries  thinkable 
to  me.  You  're  altogether  too  much  taken  up  with 
your  interests.  Be  as  much  so  as  you  like  or  as  you 
must;  I  've  always  respected  your  right.  Only  when 
I  have  kept  myself  in  durance  on  purpose  to  leave  you 
an  open  field,  don't,  by  way  of  thanking  me,  come  and 
call  me  an  idiot." 

"Oh,  you  claim  then  that  you  Ve  made  sacrifices  ?" 

"Several!   You  Ve  never  suspected  it  ?" 

"If  I  had,  do  you  suppose  I  would  have  allowed 
them  ?"  Roderick  magnificently  demanded. 

"They  were  sacrifices  to  friendship,  and  they  were 
easily,  eagerly,  rejoicingly  made.  Only  I  don't  enjoy 
having  them  thrown  back  in  my  teeth." 

This  was  in  all  the  conditions  a  sufficiently  gener 
ous  speech;  but  Roderick  scanned  it  as  he  might 
have  scanned  the  total  of  an  account  not  presented  in 

507 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

items.    "Come,  be  more  definite,"  he  said.    "Let  me 
know  where  it  is  the  shoe  has  pinched." 

Rowland  frowned;  if  he  would  n't  take  generosity 
he  should  have  full  justice.  "It 's  a  perpetual  sacri 
fice  then  to  live  with  a  remorseless  egotist!" 

"I  'm  a  remorseless  egotist  ?"  Roderick  returned. 

"Did  it  never  occur  to  you  ?" 

"An  egotist  to  whom  you  have  made  perpetual 
sacrifices  ?"  He  repeated  the  words  in  a  singular  tone; 
a  tone  that  denoted  neither  exactly  indignation  nor 
incredulity,  but  (strange  as  it  might  seem)  a  sudden 
violent  curiosity  for  news  about  himself. 

"You  're  selfish,"  said  Rowland;  "you  think  only 
of  yourself  and  believe  only  in  your  own  history.  You 
regard  other  people  only  as  they  play  into  your  own 
hands.  You  've  always  been  very  frank  about  it,  and 
the  thing  seemed  so  mixed  up  with  the  nature  of  your 
genius  and  the  very  breath  of  your  life  that  often  one 
was  willing  to  take  the  evil  with  the  good  and  to  be 
thankful  that,  considering  your  great  talent,  you  were 
no  worse.  But  if  one  was  to  believe  in  you  as  I  've 
done  one  was  to  pay  a  tax  on  one's  faith!" 

Roderick  leaned  his  elbows  on  his  knees,  clasped 
his  hands  together  and  crossed  them  shadewise  over 
his  eyes.  In  this  attitude  for  a  moment  he  sat  looking 
coldly  at  his  friend.  "  So  I  've  made  you  very  un 
comfortable  ?"  he  went  on. 

"Extremely  so." 

"I  've  been  eager,  grasping,  obstinate,  vain,  un 
grateful,  indifferent,  cruel  ?" 

"  I  Ve  accused  you  mentally  of  all  these  things  — 
with  the  particular  exception  of  vanity." 

508 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"You  've  therefore  often  hated  me  ?" 

"Never.  I  should  have  parted  company  with  you 
before  coming  to  that." 

"  But  you  've  wanted  to  part  company,  to  bid  me 
go  on  my  way  and  be  hanged  ?" 

"  Repeatedly.  Then  I  've  had  patience  and  for 
given  you." 

"Forgiven  me,  eh  ?  Suffering  all  the  while  ?" 

"Yes,  you  may  call  it  suffering." 

Roderick  thought  a  moment.  "Why  did  you 
never  tell  me  all  this  before  ?" 

"Because  my  affection  was  always  stronger  than 
my  resentment;  because  I  preferred  to  err  on  the  side 
of  kindness;  because  I  had  myself  in  a  measure 
launched  you  in  the  world  and  thrown  you  among 
temptations;  and  because  nothing  short  of  your  un 
warrantable  aggression  just  now  could  have  made  me, 
with  this  effect  of  harshness,  break  my  silence." 

Roderick  picked  up  a  blade  of  long  grass  and  began 
to  bite  it;  Rowland  was  puzzled  by  his  expression  and 
manner.  They  were  strangely  detached  and  as  if 
unnaturally  quiet.  "I  must  have  been  horrible,"  he 
presently  resumed. 

"I  'm  not  talking  for  your  entertainment,"  his 
companion  declared. 

"Of  course  not.  For  my  edification!"  And  as  he 
spoke  the  air  seemed  colder  for  his  breath. 

"I  Ve  spoken  for  my  own  relief,"  Rowland  went 
on,  "and  so  that  you  need  never  again  go  so  utterly 
astray  as  you  've  done  this  morning." 

"It  has  been  a  terrible  mistake  then  ?"  What  his 
ytone  represented  was  doubtless  no  direct  purpose  of 

5°9 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

irony,  but  irresponsible,  void  of  positive  compunction, 
it  jarred  at  moments  almost  like  an  insult.  Rowland 
answered  nothing.  "And  all  this  time,"  Roderick 
continued,  "you  've  been  in  love  ?  Tell  me  then, 
please  —  if  you  don't  mind — with  whom." 

Rowland  felt  the  temptation  to  give  him  a  palpable 
pang.  "  With  whom  but  with  the  nearest  —  ?" 

"The  nearest  —  ?"  Roderick  maintained  his  cold, 
large  stare,  which  seemed  so  to  neglect  and  overshoot 
the  near.  But  then  he  brought  it  down.  "You  mean 
with  poor  Mary  ?" 

"I  mean  with  Miss  Garland." 

At  the  tone,  suddenly,  he  coloured;  something  had 
touched  him  somewhere.  He  gave,  however,  at  first, 
under  control,  the  least  possible  sign.  "How  ex 
traordinary!  But  I  see.  Heaven  forgive  us!" 

Rowland  took  notice  of  the  "  us,"  while  his  com 
panion,  for  further  comment,  simply  fell  back  on  the 
turf  and  lay  for  some  time  staring  at  the  sky.  At  last 
he  sprang  to  his  feet,  and  Rowland  rose  also,  con 
scious  for  the  first  time,  with  any  sharpness,  in  all 
their  intercourse,  of  having  made  an  impression  on 
him.  He  had  driven  in,  as  it  were,  a  nail,  and  found  in 
the  tap  of  his  hammer,  for  once  in  a  way,  a  sensation. 

"For  how  long  has  this  been?"  the  young  man 
went  on. 

"Since  I  first  knew  her." 

"Two  years!  And  you  've  never  told  her  ?" 

"Never." 

"You  've  told  no  one  ?" 

"You  're  the  first  person." 

"Why  then  have  you  been  silent?"  * 

510 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"Because  of  your  engagement." 

"  But  you  've  done  your  best  to  keep  that  up." 

"That's  another  matter!" 

"It's  very  wonderful,"  Roderick  presently  con 
tinued.  "It 's  like  something  in  a  bad  novel." 

"We  need  n't  expatiate  on  it,"  said  Rowland.  "All 
I  wished  to  do  was  to  rebut  your  charge  that  I  Ve 
enjoyed  any  special  immunity." 

But  still  his  friend  pondered.  "All  these  months, 
while  I  was  going  my  way!  I  wish  you  had  some  time 
mentioned  it." 

"I  acted  as  was  necessary,  and  that 's  the  end  of 
the  matter." 

"You  've  a  very  high  opinion  of  her  ?" 

"The  highest." 

"I  remember  now  your  occasionally  expressing  it 
and  my  being  struck  with  it.  But  I  never  dreamed  you 
were  in  love  with  her.  It 's  a  pity,"  Roderick  added, 
"that  she  does  n't  care  for  you." 

Rowland  had  made  his  point  and  had  no  wish  to 
prolong  the  conversation;  but  he  would  have  liked 
to  hear  more  of  this,  and  he  remained  silent. 

"You  hope,  I  suppose,  that  she  may  some  day  be 
moved  ?"  Roderick  enquired. 

"I  should  n't  have  offered  to  say  so;  but  since  you 
ask  me,  I  do." 

"Well,  I  don't  believe  it,  you  know.  She  idolises 
me,  and  if  she  never  were  to  see  me  again  she  would 
idolise  my  memory." 

This  might  be  vivid  insight  and  it  might  be  deep 
fatuity.  Rowland  turned  away;  he  could  n't  trust 
himself  to  speak. 

5" 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"My  indifference,  my  neglect  of  her,  must  have 
seemed  to  you  too  base,"  his  companion  pursued. 
"Altogether  I  must  have  appeared  simply  hideous." 

"Do  you  really  care,"  Rowland  was  prompted  to 
ask,  "for  what  you  may  have  appeared  ?" 

"Certainly.  I've  been  damnably  stupid.  Isn't 
an  artist  supposed  to  be  a  man  of  fine  perceptions  ? 
I  have  n't,  as  it  turns  out,  had  one." 

"Well,  you've  a  beautiful  one  now,  and  we  can 
start  afresh." 

"And  yet,"  said  Roderick,  "though  you  've  suf 
fered,  in  a  degree,  I  don't  believe  you  've  suffered  so 
much  as  some  other  men  would  have  done." 

"Very  likely  not.  In  such  matters  quantitative 
analysis  is  difficult." 

Roderick  picked  up  his  stick  and  stood  looking  at 
the  ground.  "  I  must  nevertheless  have  seemed  hid 
eous,"  he  repeated  —  "hideous."  He  turned  away 
frowning,  and  Rowland  offered  no  contradiction. 

They  were  both  silent  a  while,  and  at  last  Roderick 
gave  a  long,  subdued  exhalation,  the  discharge  of  a 
consciousness  too  suddenly  overloaded,  and  began  to 
move  off. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  Rowland  then  de 
manded. 

"Oh,  I  don't  care!  To  walk, to  look  about, to  'com 
mune  with  nature.'  You  've  given  me  an  idea,  and 
I  nowadays  have  so  few  that  I  'm  taking  this  one  with 
me.  I  don't  quite  know  what  I  can  do  with  it,  but  per 
haps  I  shall  find  out.  Leave  me  to  try  —  though 
I  Ve  already  been  so  stupid."  This  seemed  a  salutary 
impulse,  yet  Rowland  felt  a  nameless  doubt.  "  That, 

512 


RODERICK  HUDSON 

you  know,  damns  me  more  than  anything,"  Roderick 
went  on.  "Certainly  I  can  shut  up  shop  now." 

Rowland's  immediate,  his  personal  relief  had 
dropped  after  speaking;  yet  at  sight  of  the  way  such 
a  character  could  hang  together  he  still  felt  justified. 
It  was  egotism  always  —  the  shock  of  taste,  the  hu 
miliation  of  a  proved  blunder,  the  sense,  above  all,  of 
a  flagrant  want  of  grace;  but  never  a  hint  of  simple 
sorrow  for  pain  inflicted.  He  let  the  poor  boy  go  and 
for  some  moments  stood  watching  him;  then  of  a 
sudden  he  yielded  to  an  impulse  all  inconsequent, 
a  desire  to  stop  him,  to  have  another  word  with  him, 
not  to  lose  sight  of  him.  He  called  out,  and  Roderick 
turned.  "I  should  like  to  go  with  you,"  said  our 
friend. 

"Oh,  I  'm  fit  only  to  be  alone.  It 's  awful!" 

"You  had  better  not  think  of  it  at  all,"  Rowland 
cried,  "than  think  in  that  way." 

"There's  only  one  way.  I've  been  grotesque!" 
And  he  broke  off  and  marched  away,  taking  long 
steps  and  swinging  his  stick.  Rowland  still  watched 
him  and  in  another  instant  called  to  him  again.  Rod 
erick  stopped  and  looked  back  in  silence;  after  which, 
abruptly  turning,  he  disappeared  below  the  crest  of 
a  hill. 


XXVI 

ROWLAND  passed  the  remainder  of  the  day  as  best 
he  could.  He  could  scarce  have  said  whether  he  were 
exalted  or  depressed;  he  felt,  uneasily,  placed  in  the 
wrong  in  spite  of  his  excellent  cause.  Roderick  made 
no  appearance  at  luncheon;  but  of  this,  with  his 
passion  for  mooning  away  the  hours  on  far-off  moun 
tain-sides,  he  had  almost  made  a  habit.  Mrs.  Hud 
son's  face,  at  the  noonday  repast,  showed  how  his 
sharp  demand  for  money  had  unsealed  the  fountains 
of  her  distress.  Little  Singleton  consumed  an  enor 
mous  and  well-earned  meal.  Mary  Garland,  Row 
land  observed,  had  not  contributed  her  scanty  assist 
ance  to  her  kinsman's  pursuit  of  the  Princess  Casa- 
massima  without  an  effort  that  had  ploughed  deep. 
She  had  clearly,  in  fact,  been  ravaged  by  it,  and  she 
looked  so  ill  and  remained  so  silent  that,  the  repast 
over,  Rowland  expressed  to  her  the  fear  that  she  was 
seriously  unwell.  They  had  come  out  upon  the  grass 
in  front  of  the  inn. 

"I've  a  bad  headache — that's  all."  And  then 
suddenly,  looking  about  at  the  menacing  sky  and 
motionless  air,  "It's  this  horrible  day!"  she  said. 

He  that  afternoon  tried  to  write  a  letter  to  his 
cousin  Cecilia,  but  his  head  and  his  heart  were  alike 
heavy,  and  he  traced  upon  the  paper  but  a  single 
line.  "  I  believe  there  's  such  a  thing  as  being  too 
reasonable.  Yet  when  once  the  habit 's  formed  what 

1*4 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

is  one  to  do  ?"  He  had  occasion  to  use  his  keys,  and 
he  felt  for  them  in  his  pockets;  they  were  missing, 
and  he  remembered  that  he  had  left  them  lying  on 
the  hill-top  where  he  had  had  his  talk  with  Rod 
erick.  He  went  forth  in  search  of  them  and  found 
them  where  he  had  thrown  them.  He  flung  him 
self  down  in  the  same  place  again;  he  felt  it  impos 
sible  to  walk.  He  was  conscious  that  his  mood  had 
greatly  changed  since  the  morning;  his  extraordin 
ary  acute  sense  of  his  rights  had  been  replaced  by 
the  familiar  chronic  sense  of  his  duties.  His  duties, 
however,  now  seemed  only  to  defy  him;  he  turned 
over  and  buried  his  face  in  his  arms.  He  lay  so  a 
long  time,  thinking  of  many  things;  the  sum  of 
them  all  was  that  Roderick  had  beaten  him.  At  last 
he  was  startled  by  an  extraordinary  sound,  which 
defined  itself  the  next  instant  as  a  portentous  growl 
of  thunder.  He  got  up  and  saw  that  the  whole  face 
of  the  sky  had  altered.  The  clouds  that  had  hung 
motionless  all  day  were  moving  from  their  stations 
and  getting  into  position  for  a  battle.  The  wind  was 
rising,  the  turbid  vapours  growing  dark  and  thick. 
It  was  a  striking  spectacle,  but  Rowland  judged 
best  to  observe  it  briefly,  as  a  storm  was  evidently 
imminent.  He  took  the  path  to  the  inn  and  found 
Singleton  still  at  his  post,  profiting  by  the  last  of  the 
rapidly-failing  light  to  finish  his  study  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  making  rapid  notes  of  the  actual  con 
dition  of  the  clouds. 

"We  're  going  to  have  the  biggest  show  the  Alps 
can  give,"  the  little  painter  gleefully  cried.  "I  should 
like  awfully  to  do  it." 

515 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Rowland  adjured  him  to  pack  up  his  tools  and 
decamp,  and  then  repaired  to  the  house.  The  air  by 
this  time  had  become  densely  dark,  and  the  thunder 
was  incessant  and  deafening;  in  the  midst  of  it  the 
lightning  flashed  and  vanished  as  the  treble  shrills 
upon  the  bass.  The  innkeeper  and  his  servants,  won 
dering  and  blinking,  pale  in  the  frequent  flare,  had 
pressed  to  the  doorway,  and,  as  Rowland  approached, 
the  group  divided  to  let  some  one  pass  from  within. 
Mrs.  Hudson,  her  face  white  and  convulsed,  wav 
ing  her  arms,  came  out  as  if,  on  some  alarm  of  a 
flood,  she  were  walking  in  the  water  breast-high. 

"My  boy,  my  boy,  where  's  my  boy  ?"  she  cried. 
"Mr.  Mallet,  why  are  you  here  without  him  ?  Bring 
him  straight  home  to  me!" 

"Has  no  one  seen  Mr.  Hudson  ?"  Rowland  asked 
of  the  others.  "Has  he  not  returned  ?" 

Each  one  shook  his  head  and  looked  grave,  and 
Rowland  represented  to  the  poor  lady,  and  by  the 
same  urgency  to  himself,  that  Roderick  would  of 
course  have  sought  asylum  in  some  secure  chalet. 

"Go  and  find  him,  go  and  find  him  !"  she  none 
the  less  imperiously  quavered.  "Don't  stand  there 
and  talk,  or  my  reason  will  give  way!"  It  was  now 
as  dark  as  evening,  and  Rowland  could  just  dis 
tinguish  the  figure  of  Singleton  scampering  home 
with  his  box  and  easel.  "And  where 's  Mary?" 
Mrs.  Hudson  went  on;  "what  in  mercy's  name  has 
become  of  her?  Mr.  Mallet,  why  did  you  ever  bring 
us  here  ?" 

There  came  a  huge  white  glare,  under  which,  for 
thirty  seconds,  all  nature  stood  still  and  Rowland, 

516 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

making  out  a  slight  figure  on  the  top  of  an  eminence 
near  the  house,  recognised  the  younger  woman,  urged 
forth  by  her  anxiety  and  almost  insanely  exposed.  He 
sprang  out  to  join  her,  but  in  a  moment  he  met  her 
coming  back.  He  seized  her  hand  and  hurried  her 
to  the  house,  where,  as  soon  as  she  stepped  into  the 
covered  gallery,  Mrs.  Hudson  fell  upon  her  with 
frantic  lamentations. 

"  Did  you  see  anything  —  nothing  ?  Tell  Mr. 
Mallet  he  must  go  and  find  him,  with  some  men, 
some  lights,  some  wraps,  some  wine.  Go,  go,  go, 
sir!  In  mercy,  go!" 

Rowland,  thus  assaulted  by  the  terrors  of  others, 
threw  himself  back  with  force  on  his  own  argument. 
He  had  offered  it  in  all  sincerity;  nothing  was  more 
probable  than  that  Roderick  had  found  shelter  in 
a  herdsman's  cabin.  These  were  numerous  on  the 
neighbouring  mountains,  and  the  storm  had  given 
fair  warning  of  its  approach.  Mary  stood  there  at 
first  without  a  word,  only  looking  hard  at  him.  He 
expected  she  would  try  to  soothe  her  cousin.  "Could 
you  find  him?"  she  suddenly  asked.  "Would  it  be 
of  use?" 

The  question  struck  him  as  a  flash  intenser  than 
when  the  jaws  of  the  night  opened  to  the  whiteness 
of  a  thousand  teeth.  It  shattered  his  dream  that  he 
weighed  in  the  scale.  But  before  he  could  answer 
the  tempest  was  in  possession  and  the  rain,  about 
them,  like  the  sound  of  the  deeps  about  a  ship's  sides. 
Every  one  fell  back  into  the  house.  There  had  been 
no  time  to  light  lamps,  and  in  the  little  uncarpeted 
parlour,  in  the  unnatural  darkness,  Rowland  felt 

517 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

Mary's  hand  on  his  arm.  He  imputed  for  a  moment 
a  meaning  to  it,  some  attenuation  of  her  vain  chal 
lenge,  an  assurance  that  she  accepted,  for  Roderick, 
whatever  he  thought  probable.  But,  nevertheless, 
thought  Rowland,  the  cry  had  come,  her  passion 
had  spoken;  her  first  impulse  had  been  to  sacrifice 
him.  He  had  been  uncertain  before;  here  at  least 
was  the  comfort  of  certainty.  .  v; 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  the  certainty 
did  little  to  enliven  the  gloom  of  that  formidable 
evening.  There  was  a  noisy  crowd  everywhere  — 
noisy  even  beyond  the  uproar  without;  lodgers 
and  servants,  chattering,  shuffling,  bustling,  voci 
ferating;  breaking  in,  as  he  felt,  upon  the  dignity 
of  the  storm.  It  was  some  time,  in  the  confusion, 
before  a  lamp  was  lighted,  and  the  first  thing  it  showed 
him  when  swung  from  the  ceiling  was  the  closed 
eyes  of  Mrs.  Hudson,  carried  away  in  a  faint  by 
two  stout  maid-servants  and  with  Mary  Garland 
forcing  a  passage.  He  rendered  what  help  he  could, 
but  when  they  had  laid  their  companion  on  her  bed 
Mary  motioned  him  away. 

"I  think  you  make  her  worse,"  was  all  the  girl's 
comment. 

He  could  but  betake  himself  then  to  his  own  room. 
The  partitions  in  Swiss  mountain-inns  are  thin,  and 
he  heard  Mrs.  Hudson's  wail  three  doors  away.  The 
rage  of  the  weather,  for  all  its  violence,  was  slow  to 
abate;  it  held  its  own  for  two  lone  hours.  With  the 

'  O 

drop  of  the  thunder  the  rush  of  water  continued,  and 
night  had  come  on  impenetrably  black.  Rowland 
thought  of  Mary  Garland's  question  in  the  porch, 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

but  he  thought  still  more  that,  although  the  fetid 
interior  of  a  high-nestling  chalet  may  offer  a  con 
venient  refuge  from  an  Alpine  tempest,  there  was 
no  possible  music  in  the  universe  so  sweet  as  the 
sound  of  Roderick's  voice.  At  midnight,  from  his 
window,  through  the  ebb  of  the  tide,  he  made  out 
a  star  and  immediately  went  below  and  out  into  the 
gallery.  The  rain  had  ceased,  the  cloud-masses 
showed  gaps  and  the  gaps  cold  points  of  light.  In 
a  few  minutes  he  heard  a  step  behind  him  and, 
turning,  saw  Mary  Garland.  He  asked  about  Mrs. 
Hudson  and  learned  that  she  was  sleeping,  exhausted 
by  her  long  tension.  Mary's  eyes  kept  sounding 
the  night,  but  she  said  nothing  to  cast  doubt  on  the 
idea  of  Roderick's  having  found  a  refuge.  Rowland 
noticed  it  and  knew  this  assurance  then  for  a  matter 
as  to  which  he  would  be  held  responsible.  There 
was  something  she  further  wished  to  learn,  and  a 
question  presently  revealed  it.  "What  made  him 
start  on  a  long  walk  so  suddenly?"  she  asked.  "I 
saw  him  at  eleven  o'clock,  and  then  he  meant  to  go 
to  Engelberg  and  sleep." 

"On  his  way  to  Interlaken!"  Rowland  said. 

"Yes,"  she  answered  under  cover  of  the  darkness. 

"We  had  some  talk,"  said  Rowland,  "and  he 
seemed,  for  the  day,  to  have  given  up  Interlaken." 

"Did  you  dissuade  him?" 

"Not  exactly.  We  discussed  another  question, 
which  for  the  time  appeared  to  have  superseded  his 
plan." 

Mary  was  silent;  after  which,  "May  I  ask  whether 
your  discussion  was  violent  ?"  she  went  on. 

519 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

"I  'm  afraid  it  was  easy  for  neither  of  us." 

"And  Roderick  left  you  in  —  in  irritation  ?" 

"I  offered  him  my  company  on  his  walk,  but  he 
would  n't  have  me." 

Mary  paced  to  the  end  of  the  gallery  and  came 
back.  "If  he  had  gone  to  Engelberg  he  would  have 
reached  the  hotel  before  the  storm  began." 

Rowland  felt  himself  suddenly  break  out.  "Oh, 
if  you  like,  he  can  start  for  Interlaken  as  soon  as  he 
comes  back!" 

But  it  was  as  if  she  were  unconscious  of  his  re 
mark.  "Will  he  come  back  early?"  she  pursued. 

"We  may  suppose  so." 

"  He  '11  know  how  anxious  we  are,  and  he  '11  start 
with  the  first  light." 

He  was  on  the  point  of  declaring  that  Roderick's 
readiness  to  throw  himself  into  the  feelings  of  others 
made  this  extremely  probable;  but  he  checked  him 
self  and  said  simply:  "I  expect  him  at  sunrise." 

She  gave  again,  into  the  darkness  round  her,  a  long, 
strained  stare  and  then  went  into  the  house.  Row 
land,  it  must  be  averred,  in  spite  of  his  determina 
tion  not  to  worry,  found  no  sleep  that  night.  When 
the  early  dawn  began  to  tremble  in  the  east  he  came 
forth  again  into  the  open  air.  The  storm  had  com 
pletely  cleared  it,  and  the  day  gave  promise  of  cloud 
less  splendour.  He  watched  the  first  sun-shafts 
slowly  reach  higher  and  remembered  that  if  Rod 
erick  should  not  be  back  to  breakfast  there  were 
two  points  to  be  made.  One  was  the  heaviness  of 
the  soil  on  the  mountain-sides,  saturated  with  the 
rain,  which  would  make  him  walk  slowly;  the  other 

520 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  the  fact  that,  speaking  without  irony,  he  was 
not  remarkable  for  his  divination  of  the  conven 
ience  of  others.  Breakfast  at  the  inn  was  early, 
and  Roderick  had  not  then  reappeared.  Rowland 
admitted  with  this  that  he  was  worrying.  Neither 
Mrs.  Hudson  nor  her  companion  had  left  their 
apartment;  Rowland  had  a  mental  vision  of  the 
two  women  sitting  there  face  to  face  and  listening; 
he  had  no  desire  to  see  them  in  fact.  There  were 
a  couple  of  men  who  hung  about  the  inn  as  guides 
for  going  up  the  Titlis;  Rowland  sent  each  of  them 
forth  in  a  different  direction  to  ask  for  news  wher 
ever  news  might  be  gathered.  Then  he  called  Sam 
Singleton,  whose  peregrinations  had  made  him  a 
prime  rambler  and  whose  zeal  and  sympathy  were 
now  unbounded,  and  the  two  started  together  to 
ascertain  what  they  might.  By  the  time  they  had 
lost  sight  of  the  inn  they  were  obliged  to  confess  that 
decidedly  their  friend  had  had  time  to  come  back. 

Ours,  poor  man,  wandered  about  for  several  hours, 
but  found  only  the  sunny  stillness  of  the  mountain 
sides.  Before  long  he  had  parted  company  with  Sin 
gleton,  who,  to  his  suggestion  that  separation  would 
extend  their  search,  assented  with  fixed  eyes  that  re 
flected  his  own  dire  obsession.  The  day  was  magni 
ficent,  the  sun  everywhere;  the  storm  had  lashed 
the  lower  slopes  into  a  deeper  flush  of  autumnal 
colour  and  the  snow-peaks  reared  themselves  above 
the  near  horizon  in  shining  blocks  and  sharp  inci 
sions.  He  made  his  way  to  several  far-perched  huts, 
but  most  of  them  were  empty  and  some  of  them 
closed.  He  thumped  at  their  low  foul  doors  with 

521 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

nervous  savage  anger;  he  challenged  the  stupid 
silence  to  speak  to  him  of  his  friend.  Some  of  these 
places  had  evidently  not  been  open  for  months.  The 
silence  everywhere  was  horrible;  it  mocked  at  his 
impatience,  it  was  charged  with  cruelty  and  danger. 
In  the  midst  of  it,  at  the  door  of  one  of  the  cabins, 
quite  alone,  sat  a  hideous  cretin  who  grinned  at 
him  over  a  vast  goitre  when,  hardly  knowing  what 
he  did,  he  put  vain  questions.  This  creature's  family 
was  scattered  on  the  mountain;  he  could  give  no 
help  toward  rinding  them.  Rowland  climbed  into 
the  awkward  places  Roderick  loved;  he  looked 
down  into  ugly  chasms  from  narrow  steep-drop 
ping  ledges;  and  he  was  to  consider  afterwards, 
uneasily,  how  little  he  had  heeded  his  foothold.  But 
the  sun,  as  I  have  said,  was  everywhere;  it  illumined 
the  depths  and  heights  in  presence  of  which,  not 
knowing  where  to  turn  next,  he  halted  and  lingered, 
and  showed  him  nothing  but  the  stony  Alpine  void 
— nothing  so  human  even  as  a  catastrophe  or  a  trace. 
At  noon  he  paused  in  his  quest  and  sat  down  on 
a  stone;  the  conviction  pressed  him  hard  that  the 
worst  now  conceivable  was  true.  He  stopped  look 
ing;  he  was  afraid  to  go  on.  He  sat  there  for  an 
hour,  sick  to  his  innermost  soul.  Without  his  know 
ing  why,  several  things,  chiefly  trivial,  that  had  hap 
pened  during  the  last  two  years  and  that  he  had 
quite  forgotten,  lived  again  before  him  and  breathed 
their  mortal  chill  into  his  face.  He  was  roused  at 
last  by  the  sound  of  a  stone  dislodged  near  by,  which 
rattled  down  the  mountain.  In  a  moment,  on  a 
rough  slope  opposite,  he  beheld  a  figure  cautiously 

522 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

descending  —  a  figure  which  was  not  Roderick's. 
It  was  Singleton's,  who  had  seen  him  and  begun  to 
beckon. 

"Come  down  —  come  down!"  cried  this  com 
panion,  steadily  making  his  own  way  down.  Row 
land  saw  that  as  he  moved,  and  even  as  he  selected 
his  foothold  and  watched  his  steps,  he  was  looking 
at  something  at  the  bottom  of  the  cliff.  This  was 
a  great  rugged  wall  that  sloped  backward  from  the 
perpendicular,  and  the  descent,  though  difficult,  was 
with  care  sufficiently  practicable. 

"What  do  you  see?"    Rowland  managed  to  call. 

Singleton  stopped,  looked  across  at  him  and 
seemed  to  hesitate;  then,  "Come  down  —  come 
down!"  he  simply  repeated. 

Rowland's  course  was  also  precipitous,  and  he 
attacked  it  so  dizzily  that  he  marvelled,  later  on,  he 
had  not  broken  his  neck.  It  was  a  ten  minutes' 
headlong  scramble.  Half-way  down  he  saw  some 
thing  that  for  a  minute  did  make  him  reel;  he  saw 
what  Singleton  had  seen.  In  the  gorge  below  a  vague 
white  mass  lay  tumbled  upon  the  stones.  He  let 
himself  go,  blindly,  fiercely,  to  where  Singleton, 
reaching  the  rocky  bottom  of  the  ravine  first,  had 
bounded  forward  and  fallen  upon  his  knees.  Row 
land  overtook  him,  and  his  own  legs  gave  way  for 
horror.  The  thing  that  yesterday  was  his  friend 
lay  before  him  as  the  chance  of  the  last  breath  had 
left  it,  and  out  of  it  Roderick's  face  stared  open- 
eyed  at  the  sky. 

He  had  fallen  from  a  great  height,  but  he  was  sin 
gularly  little  disfigured.  The  rain  had  spent  its  tor- 

523 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

rents  upon  him,  and  his  clothes  and  hair  were  as  wet 
as  if  the  billows  of  the  ocean  had  flung  him  upon  the 
strand.  An  attempt  to  move  him  would  attest  some 
fatal  fracture,  some  horrible  physical  dishonour,  but 
what  Rowland  saw  on  first  looking  at  him  was  only 
a  noble  expression  of  life.  The  eyes  were  the  eyes  of 
death,  but  in  a  short  time,  when  he  had  closed  them, 
the  whole  face  seemed  to  revive.  The  rain  had  washed 
away  all  blood;  it  was  as  if  violence,  having  wrought 
her  ravage,  had  stolen  away  in  shame.  Roderick's 
face  might  have  shamed  her;  it  wras  indescribably, 
and  all  so  innocently,  fair. 

Then  Singleton  spoke  as  for  the  time  of  his  life. 
"He  was  the  most  beautiful  of  men!" 

They  looked  up  through  their  dismay  at  the  cliff 
from  which  he  had  unmistakeably  fallen  and  which 
lifted  its  blank  and  stony  face  above  him,  with  no 
care  now  but  to  drink  the  sunshine  on  which  his  eyes 
were  closed;  and  Rowland  had  thus  a  wild  outbreak 
of  pity  and  anguish.  His  friend  put  round  him  a  sup 
porting  arm,  and  the  pair  gasped  together,  for  a  long 
minute,  in  their  pain,  like  guilty  creatures  discovered. 
At  last  they  spoke  of  carrying  their  comrade  home. 
"There  must  be  three  or  four  men,"  Rowland  said, 
"and  they  must  be  brought  fast.  I  haven't  the  least 
idea  where  we  are." 

"We  're  at  about  three  hours'  walk  from  the  inn. 
It 's  I  who  must  go  for  help,"  Singleton  insisted;  "I 
can  easily  find  my  way." 

"Remember  then  whom  you  '11  have  to  face!"  said 
Rowland. 

"I  remember,"  the  little  artist  answered.    "There 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

was  nothing  I  could  ever  do  for  him  before;   I  '11  do 
what  I  can  now." 

He  went  off  and  Rowland  remained  alone.  He 
watched  in  the  flesh  for  seven  long  hours,  but  the 
vigil  of  his  spirit  was  a  thing  that  would  never  cease. 
The  most  rational  of  men  wandered  and  lost  himself 
in  the  dark  places  of  passion,  lashed  his  "conduct" 
with  a  scourge  of  steel,  accusing  it  of  cruelty  and  in 
justice:  he  would  have  lain  down  there  in  Roderick's 
place  to  unsay  the  words  that  had  yesterday  driven 
him  forth  on  his  ramble  of  despair.  Roderick  had 
been  fond  of  saying  that  there  are  such  things  as 
necessary  follies,  and  he,  of  all  men,  was  now  proving 
it.  The  great  gaunt  wicked  cliff  above  them  became 
almost  company  to  him,  as  the  chance-saved  photo 
graph  of  a  murderer  might  become  for  a  shipwrecked 
castaway  a  link  with  civilisation:  it  had  but  done  its 
part  too,  and  what  were  they  both,  in  their  stupidity, 
he  and  it,  but  dumb  agents  of  fate  ?  He  tried  at  any 
rate  to  understand  what  had  hideously  happened. 
Not  that  it  offered  one  healing  touch;  before  the 
absoluteness,  the  grim  majesty,  of  the  fact  explan 
ations  and  suppositions  had  only  an  effect  of  con- 
tributive  meanness.  Roderick's  stricken  state  had 
driven  him,  in  the  mere  motion  of  flight,  higher  and 
further  than  he  knew;  he  had  outstayed  supposeably 
the  first  menace  of  the  storm  and  perhaps  even  found 
a  dark  distraction  in  watching  it.  Perhaps  he  had 
simply  lost  himself.  The  tempest  had  overtaken  him, 
and  when  he  tried  to  return  it  had  been  too  late.  He 
had  attempted  to  descend  the  clifF  in  the  treacherous 
gloom,  he  had  made  the  inevitable  slip,  and  whether 

525 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

he  had  fallen  fifty  feet  or  three  hundred  little  mattered 
now.  Even  if  it  had  not  been  far,  it  had  been  far 
enough.  Now  that  all  was  over  Rowland  understood 
how  up  to  the  brim,  for  two  years,  his  personal  world 
had  been  filled.  It  looked  to  him  at  present  as  void 
and  blank  and  sinister  as  a  theatre  bankrupt  and 
closed. 

Singleton  came  back  with  four  men  —  one  of  them 
the  landlord  of  the  inn.  They  had  formed  a  rude  bier 
of  the  frame  of  a  chaise-a-porteurs,  and  by  taking  a 
very  roundabout  course  homeward  were  able  to  follow 
a  tolerably  level  path  and  carry  their  burden  with  due 
decency.  To  Rowland  it  seemed  as  if  the  little  pro 
cession  would  never  reach  the  inn,  yet  as  they  drew 
near  it  he  would  have  given  his  right  hand  for  a  longer 
holding-off.  The  few  lingerers  came  forward  to  do 
them  silent  solemn  homage,  and  in  the  doorway, 
clinging  together,  appeared  the  two  bereaved  women. 
Mrs.  Hudson  tottered  forward  with  outstretched 
hands,  divided  between  yearning  and  terror;  but 
before  she  reached  her  son  Mary  Garland  had  rushed 
past  her  and,  in  the  face  of  the  staring,  pitying,  awe- 
stricken  crowd,  had  flung  herself,  with  the  magni 
ficent  movement  of  one  whose  rights  were  supreme 
and  with  a  loud  tremendous  cry,  upon  the  senseless 
vestige  of  all  she  had  cherished. 

That  cry  still  lives  in  Rowland's  ears.  It  interposes 
persistently  against  the  consciousness  that  when  he 
sometimes  —  very  rarely  —  sees  her,  she  is  inscrut 
ably  civil  to  him;  against  the  reflection  that  during 
the  awful  journey  back  to  America,  made  of  course 
with  his  assistance,  she  had  used  him,  with  the  last 

526 


RODERICK   HUDSON 

rigour  of  consistency,  as  a  character  definitely  ap 
pointed  to  her  use.  She  lives  with  Mrs.  Hudson  under 
the  New  England  elms,  where  he  also  visits  his 
cousin  Cecilia  more  frequently  than  of  old.  When  he 
calls  on  Mary  he  never  sees  the  elder  lady.  Cecilia,  who, 
having  her  shrewd  impression  that  he  comes  for  the 
young  person,  the  still  young  person,  of  interest  at  the 
other  house  as  much  as  for  any  one  else,  fails  to  show 
as  unduly  flattered,  and  in  fact  pronounces  him,  at 
each  reappearance,  the  most  restless  of  mortals.  But 
he  always  says  to  her  in  answer:  "No,  I  assure  you 
I  'm  the  most  patient!"  And  then  he  talks  to  her  of 
Roderick,  of  whose  history  she  never  wearies  and 
whom  he  never  elsewhere  names. 


THE  END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   •   A 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001  124945    5 


